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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



SPIRITUAL LAW 



IN 



THE NATURAL WORLD: 



AN ATTEMPT 
TO DEVELOP, ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE-TRUTH, 



THE IHTERP^ETATIOH OF N/TUl^E. 

BY F. W. GRANT. 



' But ask, now, the beasts, and they shall teach thee ; and the fowls' 

of the air, and they shall tell thee ; or speak to the earth, 

and it shall teach thee ; and the fishes of the sea 

shall declare unto thee." (Job xii. 7, 8.) 



w 14 n 

NEW YORK : 
LOIZEAUX BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

63 FOURTH AVENUE. 



V 







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v* 



Gr* 



Copyright, 1891. 
By Loizeaux Brothers 



THE BiBLE TRUTH PRESS, C3 FOURTH AVJ 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 027057 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Introduction 7 

Chap. I. — The Scripture as a Source of Knowledge. 17 

II._God's Twofold Witness 32 

III. — Nature in Scripture 39 

IV. — Natural Mathematics 45 

V. — Spiritual Mathematics 51 

VI. — Tones and Undertones ; 71 

VII.— The Kingdoms of Nature 92 

VIII. — Animal and Human 101 

IX. — Classification 114 

X. — Among the Creatures 139 

XI. — Life in its Lowest Circle 167 



PKEFACE. 



THE title of this book will assure the reader that 
its subject, at least, is one of great importance. 
It is, however brief, a connected argument in 
behalf of the positions, first, that Nature is, in its 
every detail, a witness for God ; secondly, that its 
teaching is symbolic, as largely the Old Testament 
also, the first written revelation, is known to be; 
thirdly, that it needs, therefore, an interpreter, as it is 
contrary to all rules of hermeneutics that parables 
should define doctrine; fourthly, that Scripture must 
therefore be the interpreter of Nature, and not the 
reverse ; fifthly, that if Nature be indeed a witness to 
God and yet its witness be of this character, the 
thought that Scripture is not intended to teach 
science must be very guardedly applied. 

After this, the way being opened for an unpreju- 
diced appeal to it, it is sought to show that there is in 
Nature, as in Scripture, a numerical system, which, 
as interpreted by Scripture, speaks with no uncertain 
sound of its true meaning, — mapping out its divisions, 
defining the relation of one to another and to the 
whole, while demonstrating that spiritual law reigns 
everywhere in the natural world, and that Nature not 
only witnesses to God, but definitely to the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the truth of 
Scripture. 



6 Preface. 

As to the result, it is only so startling as on that 
very account to produce a feeling of incredulity in 
most minds. It is as if one should claim to have dis- 
covered a manuscript of Aristotle, and should produce 
something written in good modern English. Having 
myself felt the full force of this, I can sympathize 
with those who feel it. The cases are of course in no 
wise parallel, and the remedy will be found in a more 
thorough scrutiny of the basis of the argument. 
Being founded on a simple comparison of only the 
most familiar facts in nature with that which can be 
fully tested by Scripture, and where every fresh ap- 
plication of the one to the other is a new verification, 
the proof submits itself to the judgment of every 
ordinary mind. 

May He whose law nature's law is be with all that 
is of Himself— which is all that is of any value — in 
what is now sent forth ! 

F. W. GRANT. 

Plainfield, N. J. 

March 19th, 1891. 



SPIRITUAL LAW IN THE NATURAL WORLD: 

AN ATTEMPT TO DEVELOP, ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE-TRUTH, 

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE, 



INTRODUCTION. 

THE title of the book which is before the reader 
will prepare him to find in it a certain sym- 
pathy with a recent one, widely known, yet 
at the same time with a difference of method which 
probably will account for a very different result. 
And yet Prof. Drummond has actually in his intro- 
duction anticipated that definition of the truth as 
to the "Natural" to which by the adoption of it I 
have committed myself here. " After all," he says, 

" the true greatness of Law lies in its vision of the Un- 
seen. Law in the visible is the Invisible in the visible. 
And to speak of Laws as natural is to define them in their 
application to a part of the universe, the sense-part, where- 
as a wider survey would lead us to regard all Law as es- 
sentially spiritual. To magnify the laws of nature, as 
laws of this small world of ours, is to take a provincial 
view of the universe. Law is great, not because the phe- 
nomenal world is great, but because these vanishing lines 
are the avenues into the eternal Order." 



8 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

And he adds further on, — 

"How the priority of the Spiritual improves the 
strength and meaning of the whole argument will be seen 
at once. The lines of the Spiritual existed first, and it 
was natural to expect that when ' the Intelligence resident 
in the Unseen ' proceeded to frame the material universe, 
He should go upon the lines already laid down. He would, 
in short, simply project the higher laws downward, so 
that the natural world would become an incarnation, a 
visible representation, a working model of the spiritual. 
The whole (?) function of the material world lies here." 

Now this is in. the main so true and good, that 
one might wonder that the author should after all 
prefer for his book the title of "Natural Law in the 
Spiritual World " rather than the converse. The 
fact is evidently that he takes the two propositions 
as identical ; and why not, if natural law is but 
spiritual law projected downward into nature ? This 
really spiritual law must then, of course, exist in the 
spiritual world ! Yet it is no wonder if he is a little 
puzzled about the limits and spirituality of the law 
of gravitation ! Without insisting too much on this, 
it is evident that the title he has chosen implies a 
method, no less than that of following the " vanish- 
ing lines" of the seen into the unseen. An ambi- 
tious attempt certainly ! My own is humbler ; and 
for me at least I feel safer. His method is to take 
nature to interpret Scripture; and I fear we must 
even say, to supplement it. On my part, with no 



Introduction. 9 

courage but such as the child's gained from the 
grasp of his father's hand, I can only seek in the 
light of Scripture to interpret nature. 

Lest I should be thought to misconceive Prof. 
Drummond here, — a thing very possible to any r 
and of which I would desire to remember the possi- 
bility, — I shall let him speak for himself, and as his 
book is in so many hands, it will be abundantly easy 
to verify the quotations. At the very outset indeed 
he tells us in his preface expressly, that when with 
him "the subject-matter Religion had taken on the 
method of the expression of Science, and I discov- 
ered myself," he says, "enunciating Spiritual Law 
in the exact terms of Biology and Physics," that 
"this was not simply a scientific coloring given 
to Religion, the mere freshening of the theological 
air with natural facts and illustrations. It was an 
entire re-casting of truth. My spiritual world be- 
fore was a chaos of facts. ... It was the one 
region still unpossessed by law. I saw then why 
men of science distrust theology ; why those who 
learn to look upon law as authority grow cold to it 
— it was the great Exception." 

It is true that he has said just before this, "I 
make no charge against theology in general. I 
speak of my own." But he must have forgotten 
this before completing the paragraph : for surely it 
was not his theology only that he says the men of 



io Spiritual Law in tJie Natural World. 

science distrusted, nor indeed any particular the- 
ology, but theology as a whole. And this distrust, 
he tells us, is chargeable, not to any thing in the 
men of science, but distinctly to theology itself. 

While his spiritual world was thus a chaos, nature 
alone appeared to him firm : — 

" And the reason is palpable. No man can study modern 
science without a change coming over his view of truth. 
What impresses him about nature is its solidity. He is 
there standing upon actual things, among fixed laws." 
" There is a sense of solidity about a law of nature, which 
belongs to nothing else in the w r orld. Here at last, amid 
all that is shifting, is one thing sure, . . . one thing that 
holds its way tome eternally, uncorrupted andundefiled." 
" In these laws one stands face to face with truth, solid 
and unchangeable. " 

This is plain speaking ; and surely in the presence 
of authority such as this, it becomes theology to 
offer her neck meekly to the yoke, and accept her 
master : every natural law is that ! But when she 
asks humbly to be shown these laws, it is somewhat 
disappointing to be told, — 

"The laws of nature are simply the orderly condition of 
things in nature, what is found in nature by a sufficient 
number of competent observers. What these laws are in 
themselves is not agreed. That they have any absolute 
existence even is far from certain " ! ! 

One would have thought that here there might 
be some hope of escape for theology after all, if the 



Introduction. 1 1 

last be true ; but the first sentence was evidently 
intended to cut off the hope. A ''sufficient" num- 
ber of " competent" observers have, we suppose, 
undertaken the government for the unseen authori- 
ties and are themselves, no doubt, authority enough. 
What observers are " competent," and how many 
of these are " sufficient," would, after all, perhaps, 
be relevant questions still ; but they are unan- 
swered. Probably this reserve is to increase our 
respect for the authorities, a thing which proverbi- 
ally, familiarity does not always do. 

This government, strange to say, is a very 
modern one. Nature's voice, it seems, has hither- 
to been "muffled." 

M But now that science has made the world around articu- 
late, it speaks to religion with a twofold purpose. In the 
first place, it offers to corroborate theology ; in the second, 
to purify it." 

The last should be first evidently : it must purify 
it first, or else in the nature of things it cannot cor- 
roborate it. It is only the revised religion that it 
can confirm ; and to submit to be revised is the 
first necessity for confirmation. Yea, — 

"and while there are some departments of theology 
where its jurisdiction cannot be sought, there are others 
in which nature may have to define the contents as well as 
the limits of belief." 

Practically, the obedient subjects of such authority 



12 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

" must oppose with every energy they possess what seems 
to them to oppose the eternal course of things/ ' 

Doubtless, so taught, they will throw sufficient 
energy into the opposition. And no wonder if by 
this process there should be in result " an entire re- 
casting of truth." " The old ground of faith, au- 
thority," he says, "is given up." Yet what else is 
the testimony of a " sufficient number of competent 
observers " ? Is it impossible that Scripture, with 
its innumerable lines of proof — " many infallible 
proofs " (Acts i. 3,) — should be equally trustworthy ? 

Note that through all these quotations Scripture 
is not suffered to appear. We hear of Theology 
and Religion, the last a term vague enough to be 
applied to the worship of a fetish or a crocodile, 
the former an extract of some kind from Scripture, 
or presumed to be so, but in the form given it by 
human minds. As such this is necessarily fallible, 
— as fallible as " a sufficient number of competent 
(natural) observers," — and being fallible, can be 
opposed to the solidity of laws of nature, without its 
being clear that in fact what represents these laws 
of nature is an "-ology " as much as the other, — an 
extract distilled through human minds. How enor- 
mous is the blunder here ! Let a man say, if he 
will, that Scripture is fallible, but man's science not, 
we know what that means : it is honest and straight- 
forward. If it be really only theology that is in 



Introduction. 1 3 

question, it is simple enough that theology may be as 
much at war with nature, as science so-called with 
Scripture. There is nothing very brilliant or calcu- 
lated to provoke comment in so trite an observation. 
Eloquent as the Edinburgh professor is, and captiv- 
ating as his book surely is, — captivating for many by 
the truth that undoubtedly is in it, — the error of his 
method manifests itself in result unmistakably. And 
it is not hard to judge either how far any true 
science is from justifying his results. We will leave 
now his introduction, from which we have hitherto 
quoted almost exclusively, and take in evidence but 
two or three passages from the body of the book. 
Here is a very positive statement from his paper on 
"Conformity to Type" (p. 297): — 

"We should be forsaking the lines of nature were we 
to imagine for a moment that the new creation was to be 
formed out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil — nothing can be 
made out of nothing. Matter is uncreatable and indestruc- 
tible ; nature and man can only form and transform.' ' 

Notice that he is talking here of new creation — 
of God's work in the soul. And yet in the face of 
this he quietly says, "matter is uncreatable." Is 
then this new creation one of " matter " ? If not, 
why speak of this ? if it be, then that which Scrip- 
ture calls creation he says is not such ! And this 
must be held if we would not forsake the lines of 
nature! "Nature and man can only form and 



14 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

transform." Theology certainly never taught that 
nature could create: does science teach that God 
cannot ? how great, to be sufficient, must the number 
of observers be to prove so great a negative ? and 
what observers should we consider " competent " for 
this? Is this not a wonderful induction from the 
fact that it is not in man's power to z//zcreate, nor 
in nature's to commit suicide, that therefore God 
cannot create ? Is it not rather unspeakable folly 
and impiety, let who will be guilty of it, to force 
nature thus into blasphemous revolt against her 
Maker ? Nay, nature will not be forced : " but who 
art thou, O man, who repliest against God ? " 

Again, in his paper on " Eternal Life," p. 236, he 
quotes approvingly from Reuss, as discovering in 
the apostle's conception of life, first, — 

"The idea of a real existence, an existence such as is 
proper to God and to the Word ; an imperishable exist- 
ence — that is to say, not subject to the vicissitudes and 
imperfections of this finite world. This primary idea is 
repeatedly expressed, at least in a negative form ; it leads 
to a doctrine of immortality, or, to speak more correctly, 
of life, far surpassing any that had been expressed in the 
formulas of the current philosophy or theology, and rest- 
ing on conceptions altogether different. In fact it can 
dispense both with the philosophical thesis of the imma- 
teriality or indestructibility of the human soul, and with 
the theological thesis of a miraculous corporeal recon- 
struction of our person ; theses, the first of which is alto- 



Introduction. 1 5 

g 'ether foreign to the religion of the Bible, and the second, 
absolutely opposed to reason." 

Here we find at once the affirmation of the ma- 
teriality of the soul, and the denial of the doctrine 
of the resurrection : with the last of which the 
apostle affirms goes overboard the entire truth of 
Christianity. (1 Cor. xv. 12-18.) And this confirms 
the worst meaning of the extract made before. An- 
nihilation is only a lesser evil accompanying it, and 
this the definition of eternal life which he accepts 
from Herbert Spencer distinctly corroborates, for 
eternal life is according to it nothing but eternal 
material existence, and the whole question with 
Prof. Drummond in his essay on it is, how to escape 
extinction at death. That he who does not here re- 
ceive eternal life must become extinct without a 
resurrection, is the natural corollary. 

One more extract from the essay on " Environ- 
ment " (p. 281) :— 

" The completion of life is now a supreme question. It 
is important to observe how it is being answered. If we 
ask science or philosophy, they will refer us to evolution.' ' 

And he goes on to speak of struggle for life, etc., 
the elements of the most extreme Darwinian form. 

Thus it is plain how for our author science must 
purify theology, and the iron yoke which we are 
called upon thus to receive. Yet the fascination 
even for Christians of a book that contains such 



1 6 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

things is a proof that it appeals to something within 
us which needs to be met, and that it contains also 
truth which must be eliminated from the error. 
Here as elsewhere we must, as God by Jeremiah 
warns us, " take forth the precious from the vile," 
that we may be as His mouth. (Jer. xv. 19.) The 
vitiation of the conclusion w T ith Prof. Drummond 
may be plainly traced to error in the method. That 
here pursued is, as will at once be seen, entirely 
different. I accept as truth, and have done long 
before his book appeared, that the natural world is, 
in the whole of it, as it were, an incarnation, a 
visible representation of spiritual things. Nature 
I accept as I do Scripture as a witness for God of 
the most precious kind. But here Scripture it is, 
not nature, that is decisively His revelation. By 
His Word alone can we rightly understand His 
works ; and here we have a most fruitful principle, 
which needs only fully to be believed and followed, 
to show how fruitf.ul and valuable it is. But, first, 
it needs — and it is strange that it should need, 
among any who accept Scripture as of God, — to be 
clearly stated, and justified from suspicion, before 
we look at the results to which we shall be led by it. 



*7 



CHAPTER I. 

Scripture as a Source of Knowledge. 

OUR method at least is a very simple one. It is 
to appeal to Scripture freely, and in the first 
place, seeking to use it according to its full 
value, in faith that it has the highest possible value ; 
in short, that upon whatever it may speak, it will 
give us, as the Word of God must, truth without 
any mixture of error, truth that will bear the utmost 
scrutiny, and stand every possible test. It would 
be a grand thing, would it not ? to have such a 
standard of appeal, if it could only be proved that 
we have such ! Yes, indeed, if it could be proved ! 
But has not Prof. Drummond told us, "The old 
ground of faith, authority, is given up"? And is 
not this appeal considered by many as only the 
refuge of weakness, a credulity which stultifies 
reason, and would stop the onward march of scien- 
tific achievement, even if it did not put Galileo once 
more into the hands of the inquisitors, and burn 
Giordano Bruno at the stake ? Of the last, there is 
perhaps no immediate danger ; but it is plain that, 
in opposition to the modern one, with all its glory 
of brilliant discovery upon it, the method we are to 



i3 Spiritual Laiv in the Natural World. 

pursue will seem antiquated, worn out, with none of 
the vital energy of youth in it, and one which has 
been losing ground for long continually in its 
conflict with the scientific, — " extinguished theolo- 
gians/' so it has been told us, " lying about the 
cradle of every science as the strangled snakes 
beside that of Hercules/' Happily for the theolo- 
gians, it is generally found that the precocious 
infants get to be of milder manners after they 
have left the cradle, or no doubt the race would be 
extinct. 

Is the old ground of faith, authority, given up ? 
And have people learnt, with Prof. Huxley, for jus- 
tification by faith to substitute justification by veri- 
fication? Then, if the verification is meant to be, 
as of course it should be, personal, it will go hard 
with much that we have counted knowledge. How 
many have verified for themselves the leading facts 
and principles of any one of the sciences? And if, 
as Mr. Lewes says, and as we all know, "the psy- 
chological law that we only see what interests us, 
and only assimilate what is adapted to our condi- 
tion, causes the mind to select its evidence," then 
what hope is there of attaining truth by means of 
evidence gathered in this way by those for whose 
power to see aright it is wholly impossible to 
answer ? 

Says St. George Mivart :— 



Scripture as a Source of Knozuledge. 19 

" Believers have been warned, usque ad nauseam, that a 
wish to believe vitiates all their arguments. But what 
weight can we attach to conclusions such as those, e.g., 
of Prof. Huxley, who tells us, with regard to the doctrine 
of Evolution, the position of complete and irreconcilable 
opposition which in his opinion it occupies to the Church 
is 'one of Us greatest merits in my eyes.' 1 A similar, though 
less striking, theological prejudice is also exhibited by 
Mr. Darwin himself. He tells us himself, in his 'Descent 
of Man,' that in his 'Origin of Species' his^rs* object was 
'to show that species had not been separately created;' 
and he consoles himself for admitted error by the reflec- 
tion that ' I have at least, as I hope, done good service in 
aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.' " 

If others, then, are to verify for us what certainly 
we cannot all verify for ourselves, what is this but 
the bringing back again of " authority" for the 
mass, and the establishment of a board of directors 
only instead of Scripture, — Huxley and Darwin 
instead of Peter and Paul ? But why, then, the 
refusal on the one hand of what they contend for 
on the other? Is it even sincere? Nay, does not 
the special use of this doctrine of verification 
appear as something " one of whose greatest merits " 
is that it shuts off even inquiry about heaven or 
hell or a future life, things which, in the way con- 
tended for, nobody can verify? 

Every one that cares may know that Prof. Huxley 
puts inquiries of this kind on the same level with 



20 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

" lunar politics," and that to make the little corner 
of the world in which one lives a little less miserable 
and ignorant, as his duty is, "it is necessary to be 
fully possessed of only two beliefs : the first, that the 
order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to 
an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, 
that our volition counts for something as a condi- 
tion of the cause of events. Each of these beliefs," 
he says, "can be verified experimentally, as often 
as we like to try." Beyond this, he conceives we 
have but the Maya of the Buddhist — illusion. And 
a writer in The Westminster Review generalizes this 
as the conviction of the scientific man, of whom he 
says, "Above all things, he is silent in the presence 
of truths (or falsehoods) which he has ascertained 
to be beyond his reach. And he commands equally, 
in respect of these, silence on all others of mankind." 
Thus it is very clear how a board of such direct- 
ors would extinguish the theologians. And the 
very ignorance as to all that it imports man most 
to know, and of what in general he craves most to 
know, that very ignorance which pleads so strongly 
for the need (and so the fact) of revelation, is made 
the all-sufficient argument against it. The learned 
scientists of the agnostic school — in plain English, 
the school of ignorance — know, by reason of their 
oivn ignorance, that while all other instincts are pro- 
vided for, this one, as strong as any, has and can 



Scripture as a Source of Knowledge. 21 

have no provision made for it. And the One whom 
they have decreed to be the Unknowable, by that 
very decree they declare they know so well as to 
know that He cannot (or will not) reveal Himself to 
man ! For if He be the Unknown, they cannot even 
pronounce Him the Unknowable ; and if He is not 
the Unknown, then the Unknowable He cannot be. 
Bat are faith and verification really, then, so far 
asunder? Is there no possibility of reconciliation 
between the two ? Must the most absolute faith 
even be credulity? or can there be no verification 
of authority itself, so as to justify the simplest faith 
in it? How, then, are we to verify the board of 
directors? though indeed we are ready to confess 
that an enigma most insoluble to the most thinking 
man. But in the case of revelation, if it be possible 
to verify this as the word of God, will any one say 
that God is to be trusted only so far as we can 
verify His word as true, — that is, not so much as 
one would trust a man of the most ordinary repute 
for veracity ? 

Scripture does surely not refuse to submit itself 
(in this manner) to verification, — nay, it appeals to 
it. Who can be so credulous as to believe that it 
requires "blind" faith, or would be honored by it? 
who that has ever read it, — aye, and who that knows 
whereof he speaks would dare to affirm that its 
principal proof even is (according to Mr. Huxley's 



22 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

sneer,) that its " verity is testified by portents and 
wonders/' when its solemn attestation is, that if 
men " believe not Moses and the prophets, neither 
will they be persuaded though one rose from the 
dead"? 

Scripture itself is in fact one of the very greatest 
"portents and wonders" to those who will give it 
that patient and reverent examination which its 
claim demands. And for this it offers itself, not 
merely to the trained man of science, or to the man 
with abundant means and leisure to investigate. Its 
gospel is preached to the poor. Like the light which 
is its emblem, it shines as directly down upon the 
rustic as on the philosopher. "Light is come into 
the world," says He who brought it. And the con- 
viction of light is something simple and immediate 
for those who have eyes to see. It is not the result 
of a long process of reasoning, where the chain is 
no stronger than its weakest link, but of a true veri- 
fication, by the illumination of what it shines on : 
" that which doth make manifest is light."(Eph.v. 13.) 

Grant this, and who will protest against its au- 
thority, or deny its absoluteness? Is not light for 
the man of science, as for the peasant, authoritative? 
And here is that in which men of all color, caste, 
and social standing rejoice together. Light, true 
and beneficent autocrat as it is, is at the same time 
the greatest leveler : one of those free gifts of God 



Scripture as a Source of Knowledge, 23 

which in their common diffusion would proclaim all 
men His offspring ; one of those silent witnesses 
against the pretension of agnostic imbecility which, 
as it proclaims darkness to be light, would quench 
the true light in darkness. How thankful beyond 
expression may we be to escape the board of direc- 
tors, and receive our light from heaven rather than 
from the " Sufficient Number of Competent Ob- 
servers " Gas Company advertised by Prof. Drum- 
mond ! Yes, note it, ye natural observers, ye dis- 
ciples of physical science, here is a law of nature, 
something in which we "stand face to face with 
truth, solid and unchangeable,'' a veritable "spirit- 
ual law in the natural world " — all the light of the 
world is from heaven. 

Test it, as much as you will ; put it to use, and it 
will light up every thing it shines on. Do not fear 
that it will leave you timidly groping in the dark, 
still less put out your eyes ffiat you may see the 
better. There never was a book more fully sub- 
mitting itself to investigation, never a book that so 
looked you in the face while speaking to you, never 
one with the marks upon it of such absolute truth- 
fulness. Simply and unadulterated, the priestcraft 
with which men would confound it dares not use it 
for its evil purposes. The man who does use it 
truly and reverently may be trusted as true and 
reverent. Mark out on your map of the world the 



24 Spiritual Lazv in the Natural World. 

regions of what even the agnostic would call the 
fullest light, and you will mark out the regions 
of an open Bible. And this is mere trite common- 
place, thank God : that is to say, every one is 
witness that the light shines ! 

We are not, however, studying Scripture evi- 
dences : we are merely pointing out their nature. 
The evidence will come when we have to show the 
light that Scripture throws upon nature. But it is 
wise to move step by step here, planting each firmly 
before we take another. Every step is contested, 
not only from without, but, alas ! also from within 
professing Christianity itself ; and to move surely 
we must move slowly. Nature is above all that 
which many professed believers are yet very chary 
in admitting to be even very accurately represented 
in Scripture, and if so, of course we need not ex- 
pect any light upon it from this source. The man 
of science is met half-way by the concessions of the 
theologian, who thinks to save the centre of his 
battle by handing over his right wing to the enemy. 
No wonder if even an infant science should " extin- 
guish" such defenders. We would gladly aid it 
even to accomplish this, assured that it would be an 
immense good if Christians were made to realize 
the only possible conditions of successful conflict. 
By all means let Hercules extinguish the " snakes/' 
though that is Huxley's comparison, not ours, for 



Scripture as a Source of Knowledge. 25 

we do not in the least insinuate falsehood or treach- 
ery in the men who do this, although it is certain 
they are playing Satan's game. 

What is it to attribute inaccuracy to Scripture, 
but to say we must no longer speak of it as the 
Word of God? Satan "is a liar, and the father of 
it." God is no more "a man that He should lie," 
than He is "the son of man, that He should re- 
pent." And this applies equally to all subjects. 
He could no more give me false physics than false 
arguments, — untrue statements as to sun or moon 
or firmament, than as to Christ or to salvation. 
Once admit a possibility of error, though it be in- 
finitesimal, it must shake conviction as to the whole. 
And the Lord Himself puts His reliability as a 
Teacher precisely on this ground. " If I have told 
you earthly things^ and ye believe not, how shall ye 
believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" Take 
away the truth of Scripture in matters in which it 
can be tested, how shall we accredit it in those where 
it cannot be tested ? " He that is faithful in that 
which is least is faithful also in much ; and he that 
is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." Such 
are the moral principles of the Author of Chris- 
tianity ; and by these we for our part are entirely 
willing that it should be judged. For with the 
Word of God what may be pleaded for man may 
not be pleaded. Man is fallible and ignorant, 



26 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

where yet he may be honest and true ; but we can- 
not plead a mistake of the Omniscient, and call him 
who makes the mistake omniscient any longer. 

Of course it will be said that, all this depends 
upon certain views of inspiration, and (some will 
think) views in our day sufficiently disproved. It 
pleased God to take up men as instruments to de- 
clare His truth, and inspiration guarded them at 
most only with regard to their special subject. It 
did not make them competent as men of science, or 
in ways irrelevant to this. And as to the last, it 
may be fully granted. Nor would any proficiency in 
science have enabled Moses to write the first chap- 
ter of Genesis, — a table of contents, as it may be 
shown to be, of the whole Bible. Yet he writes as 
one thoroughly at home in his subject, with an ease 
and confidence, yet a most natural simplicity, 
which, without laboring to do so, impresses one 
with the assurance of absolute truthfulness. Tak- 
ing it at its full worth, as far even as known, natural 
fact and spiritual type, as it is, combined, one would 
not hesitate to rest the whole argument as to the 
truth of Scripture upon the proof in that first page 
of it alone. 

Yet no doubt Moses knew as little of what full- 
ness of meaning is contained in these words of 
his as the prophets did of their prophecies, which 
Peter witnesses they had to search in order to find 



Scripture as a Source of Knozv ledge. 27 

in them the assurance of things beyond their ut- 
most searchings: " Searching what or what manner 
of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did 
signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings 
of Christ, and the glories that should follow ; unto 
whom it was revealed that not unto themselves 
but unto us they did minister the things which 
are now reported unto you by them that have 
preached the gospel unto you with the Holy 
Ghost sent down from heaven ; which things the 
angels desire to look into." 

Here, assuredly, were men not merely doing the 
best they could, but better than they knew, things 
which were consciously beyond themselves, and 
worthy of angels' occupation , and this, though 
spoken directly of prophecy, shows how "holy men 
of God spake as they were moved of the Holy 
Ghost." And why should it be confined to proph- 
ecy? Historical events, if we may believe the 
apostle, things that "happened unto" Israel, "hap- 
pened unto them for types, and are written for our 
admonition," — so that these also as types are pro- 
phetic ! And why should this be confined to 
prophecy? Who shall presume to draw the line be- 
tween what was necessary and what unnecessary, 
in the divine design for us, so as to be able to say, 
Here absolute truth had to be insured, and here 
men could be left to their unassisted wisdom ? The 



28 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

purpose of Scripture is larger and more various 
than we can divine ; and who can affirm even that 
such and such facts of science may not be necessary 
to be revealed in order to its full accomplishment? 
Is it not humbler to inquire what God has told us, 
than to speculate upon what He means to teach us? 
If nature be in any way His lesson-book for us, why 
should it not be part of His design to help us to read 
its lessons ? Nay, would we not in fact expect this ? 
and would not this modify to a large extent the 
conclusion (or assumption) that Scripture was not 
intended to teach us science ? 

"Which things we speak/' says the apostle, "not 
in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but 
which the Holy Ghost teacheth." Even here it is 
asserted that there is no claim of verbal inspiration. 
It has been said, " The term here is logos, which 
denotes rather propositions than mere ' words.' " But 
suppose this so, if propositions are (all of them) by 
the Holy Ghost, do the words have nothing to do 
with the propositions ? would not the words used be 
those best suited to define the propositions ? 

But the citations of the story of Melchisedek, 
which we find in the epistle to the Hebrews, carry 
us far beyond this, and show the extent to which it 
is to be taken. Here the very o?nissions of the his- 
tory are insisted on as having significance, as well 
as what is actually stated, and the whole argument 



Scripture as a Source of Knowledge. 29 

is a pregnant instance of that use of the microscope 
in Scripture which is quite as brilliant in result as 
it is known to be in natural science. " For this 
Melchisedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most 
High God, who met Abraham returning from the 
slaughter of the kings, and blessed him, to whom 
also Abraham gave the tenth part of all, first, being 
by interpretation, 'king of righteousness,' and then, 
after that, king of Salem, that is, 'king of peace/ 
without father, ivithout mother, without descent, hav- 
ing neither beginning of days, nor end of life, but 
made like unto the Son of God, abideth a priest 
continually." (Chap. vii. 1-3.) Now it is evident 
that the main force of the interpretation depends 
upon the points which I have emphasized, and it 
should be as evident that these points depend upon 
what we should be apt to call mere gaps in the 
record. It has been indeed supposed by some, 
from the statements made by the apostle, that Mel- 
chisedek was the Son of God Himself ; but this the 
very words, " made like unto the Son of God " 
forbid. 

Here, along with the interpretation of the gaps, 
we have that of the names, and the order of the 
names, and the whole woven into precise argument 
as to the doctrine of Christ's priesthood. 

It is plain, then, that, according to this, he who 
wrote the history of Genesis has been guided by a 



30 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

wisdom far beyond his own, and in matters of 
minute detail, in such a case as we might have im- 
agined could not have required it. Who shall 
decide, then, in any case that it did not ? Another 
instance, in which we have the authority of the Lord 
Himself, is perhaps however even more decisive ; 
for here no type is in question, but the simple use 
of a term — a very strong term, we should be apt to 
say, — for the judges in Israel, whom the eighty- 
second psalm calls " gods " as representing God : 
"I have said, ye are gods." In the tenth chapter 
of John's gospel the Lord quotes this to the Jews : 
"Is it not written in your law, 4 I said, ye are 
gods ' ? " and then founds upon it an appeal, " If He 
called them ' gods' unto whom the word of God 
came," and then adds His seal to the absolute 
authority of that from which he quotes : — "And 
Scripture cannot be broken!' 

Surely nothing can be more positive, nothing 
wider in reach than this : " Scripture " — not merely 
this or that passage, specially guided or guarded, 
because of special importance, but Scripture, as 
Scripture, — " Scripture cannot be broken." Is it 
then the statement that " In six days the Lord 
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in 
them is," or any other, however insignificant it may 
seem to us, if Scripture makes it, then its truth is 
guaranteed — " Scripture cannot be broken." 



Scripture as a Source of Knowledge. 31 

Difficulties of course may be pressed, nor is it 
here the place to examine them. Solve a hundred 
to-day, another hundred may be found for solution 
to-morrow. As to what principle of science is it 
pretended that all difficulties are removed ? and who 
waits for this before he thinks of certainty ? How 
much less does the Word of God need to wait for 
this, a requirement which would destroy the possi- 
bility of certainty as to any thing whatever. 

That " Scripture cannot be broken " is the divine 
axiom with which we set out, and in this way what 
a field for examination does it present to us. True, 
we have had it in our hands for eighteen centuries, 
yet how fresh is it to-day ! how little exhausted ! in 
some directions how little even explored ! and cer- 
tainly in few less than that which we propose, in 
dependence upon the Spirit of God, the only suffi- 
cient Teacher, now to explore. Throughout we 
desire to take the attitude and possess the spirit of 
learners while we do so, and so to proceed step by 
step, patiently acquiring what we may, and owning 
the gaps in our knowledge where they exist. 



32 



CHAPTER II. 
God's Twofold Witness. 

"npHE testimony of two men is true," says the 
" Faithful Witness." He appeals to the 
law for this, and the law speaks as follows : 
"One witness shall not rise up against a man for 
any iniquity, or for any sin, of all that one sinneth : 
at the mouth of two witnesses or at the mouth of 
three witnesses shall a matter be established." (Deut. 
xix. 15.) The apostle also cites this law of witness, 
to which God has very plainly conformed His man- 
ifestation of Himself to man. For nature and 
Scripture are just this twofold testimony in its 
full breadth ; while yet He has so constructed His 
Word as to be itself twofold, and so sufficient. The 
Old Testament thus unites with the New, and 
who that has considered it in the least but must 
appreciate the power of this for conviction ? For 
such power in twofold witness proceeds largely 
from the diversity of character and interest that 
they present. They are otherwise different, — con- 
trasted ; yet here they agree : different in such sort 
that you realize there is no collusion between them, 
— no treachery ; nothing but the necessary unity of 



God's Twofold Witness. 33 

truth could made them one. And how will this be 
strengthened in proportion as the contrast is mani- 
fold, and yet the unity pervasive : and this in the 
two Testaments is what so demonstrates them to be 
of God. 

The Old Testament is in Hebrew, the language 
of a special people, with whose history it has grown 
up, and to whom it addresses itself. It is the relig- 
ion of a nation, one of the families of the earth, its 
horizon earthly, its sanctuary a worldly one, its 
services ritualistic, ornate, elaborate, intrusted to a 
special priesthood. God is here behind a vail which 
none can penetrate ; man — all men — are shut out ; 
none can see Him and live ; for merciful as He is, 
He cannot clear the guilty, and who (let him do his 
best) is not guilty? 

This legal, sacerdotal, exclusive system, the incar- 
nation of conscience, but a bad conscience, in what 
utter contrast is it to the free, spiritual, all-embrac- 
ing spirit of Christianity! "The Lord hath said 
that He would dwell in thick darkness," says Solo- 
mon on the day of the dedication of the temple. 
(1 Ki. viii. 12.) "We walk in the light, as God is 
in the light," answers the apostle. (1 Jno. i. 7.) "Who 
can by no means clear the guilty," says the Old 
Testament voice. (Ex. xxxiv. 7.) "That justifieth 
the ungodly," says again the New Testament. 
(Rom. iv. 5.) " No man can see Me and live," is 



34 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

the elder utterance. (Ex. xxxiii. 20.) " He that hath 
seen Me hath seen the Father," are His words who 
is Himself the spirit incarnate of the New. (Jno. 
xiv. 9.) 

Here are two witnesses how diverse : can it be 
that after all under these statements, so seemingly 
conflicting, there is nevertheless a perfect unity ? 
can there be a fullness of truth which embraces and 
harmonizes all ? Yes, surely : admit what the New 
Testament so abundantly affirms and illustrates, the 
essential opposition between law and grace, and yet 
that the first is handmaid to the other ; — then, on 
the basis of law, all the Old-Testament utterances 
are but the sentence of God upon the self-right- 
eousness of man ; while the New Testament re- 
veals the heart of God in grace, upon the basis 
of a righteousness by which the law also is mag- 
nified and made honorable, and able to forego its 
penal claim. 

Thus they can be reconciled ; but is this recon- 
ciliation an after-thought ? Is it perhaps a human, 
though wonderfully wise, contrivance for adjusting 
matters between them ? Are there perhaps yet two 
authors instead of one ; and these still human, not 
divine ? This question, so necessary to be an- 
swered, receives from the Old and New Testaments 
together its full and entire satisfaction in the con- 
sideration of that typical system which pervades 



God's Twofold Witness. 35 

everywhere the former, while it anticipates and 
prophesies the latter. 

This typical system is, all through the Old Testa- 
ment, the complement and corollary of the strictly 
legal part If a soul stricken with the conviction 
of sin sought for relief and acceptance from God, it 
was shut up to sacrifice, the ordained way of ap- 
proach for every one who would draw near to Him; 
and here he found what, except in its typical teach- 
ing, contained no ray of light. Why should the blood 
of an animal shed by the hand of the offerer avail 
before God for the sin of him who shed it ? You 
must illumine that with the light of the gospel before 
you can understand it. Understood, it is then the 
illumination of all else: it is the establishment of 
law ; it is the vindication of grace ; it is the heart 
of God bursting out over all the barriers that man's 
sin could oppose to it, — God who is light, now in the 
light, revealed. 

Yes, the witnesses are one ; their testimony is 
one ; they have one Author ; grace is no after- 
thought The later word, addressed in his own lan- 
guage to the Gentile, is but the necessary develop- 
ment and issue of the earlier one. The earlier is 
interpreted by the later : the typical communication 
by the plain speech now. 

Thus, then, as to the testimony of the written 
Word. But now if there be another testimony to 



36 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

God, and the book of nature be also His book, — and 
Scripture itself affirms this, yea, who that believes in 
God could deny it ? — then these two witnesses must 
also agree in one, and that which is enigmatical 
and obscure be interpreted by the clearer, — the 
earlier, therefore, once more by the later, and not 
the reverse. Notice, too, that there is no ground 
for wonder, if the two should seem not only diverse 
in character, as they are, but contradictory even, 
which they are not. We might expect this ; while, 
by the analogy of Scripture, we may expect also 
that this apparent contradiction will end in clearer 
agreement at last, and in greater breadth and full- 
ness of testimony. 

Even as we consider this now, the reality of the 
analogy between the book of Nature and the Old 
Testament comes into fuller light, and gains assur- 
ance. If the Old Testament be the proclamation 
of law, and this be its supreme characteristic, how 
easy it is to see that Nature is even more emphatic- 
ally in some sense the kingdom of Law. This is, in 
the eyes of more than Prof. Drummond, what gives 
to it order and solidity. Grace here assuredly 
seems, at first sight, to have no place, nay, to be in 
contradiction, until we are reminded that in the 
elder book of Revelation it is in symbol and type 
that we find the teaching of this, and are led to 
realize that Nature itself, more entirely even than 



God's Twofold Witness. 37 

the Old Testament, is an object lesson, a divine 
hieroglyph, a type-teaching. This it surely is; and 
although as a whole we may not as yet have the 
full key, yet in all ages nevertheless its lessons 
have been taught and learnt, — in the earliest 
perhaps most simply. As we grow older we lose 
the unsuspecting faith of childhood, which in many 
respects is the truest wisdom ; our very language, 
which was at first pictorial, becomes hard and 
abstract, its symbols merely arbitrary and alge- 
braic, divested of the heart and pathos which 
men drank in first from nature's breast, and 
now have learnt to be ashamed of as the babble 
of the nursery. 

But we are coming back to Nature ! perhaps : 
yea, to such extreme faith in it that now our one 
knowledge is to be that of natural science, and be- 
yond it we are agnostics — know-nothings, If that 
were so, it would be but the surest proof that the 
old faith in nature nevertheless is dead. I may use 
the words, but scarcely realize the thing y when I 
speak of faith in laws, or faith in a machine. Here, 
too, "the law is not of faith." The factory-rattle 
reason may interpret perhaps ; but faith is of the 
heart, and there is no heart. We have got back to 
the old mythology, and understand how Chronos 
(Time) produces and devours again his children ; 
but do not ask me, then, to confide in Chronos. 



38 Spiritual Lazv in the Natural World. 

No: vanity of vanities, all is vanity. -Let us eat 
and drink, for to-morrow we die. 

Yet here a hint from that old Jewish law in which 
we have already found the character of a true witness 
may appeal to us. It was when man found himself 
as it might seem, in the grip of the law, and without 
hope from it, — when, though with the consciousness 
of sin upon him, he sought in his distress to God, — - 
the law itself referred him to that typical system, 
in which the heart he sought in God was found. 
Is it not so again, that when we turn to Him 
it is, and only so, that nature reveals her really 
illuminated side, and warms and kindles as with a 
summer breath ? Assuredly, it is so : and reason 
itself cannot rest satisfied short of that which satis- 
fies heart, conscience, mind alike — not a part only, 
but the whole of man 



39 



CHAPTER III. 

Nature in Scripture. 

IF the work of God in nature, then, is admitted to 
to be any testimony to God at all, that is noth- 
ing else but folly which lies hid under what is 
supposed to be a self-evident truth, that "the Bible 
was not intended to teach us science." For if 
science be nothing else than reasoned knowledge, 
and if it be of importance that Nature should give 
true witness to her God, who shall presume to say 
that Scripture will not give us help in such a matter? 
Is it not, on the other hand, rather to be expected 
that it would do so? If its own question be, "Doth 
not nature itself teach you ? " and if, after all, this 
teaching be not always so clear and explicit as to 
need no help to understand it, — (if it were, we 
could hardly put the doubt,) — then we should surely 
expect that at least the data for true science should 
be furnished us abundantly. That, after what men 
have decided, seems a bold thing to say ; to many, 
no doubt, even to be evidently contrary to the fact. 
If so, we shall refute ourselves, before we have 
traveled a good half our proposed journey. The 
answer will be found, then, as we proceed with it. 



40 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

Scripture being witness however, nature does 
teach. "The invisible things of Him are clearly 
seen, being known by the things that are made, 
even His eternal power and Godhead." (Rom. i.20.) 
" The heavens declare the glory of God, and the 
firmament showeth His handiwork." (Ps. xix. 1.) 
The work must needs declare the Artificer ; and the 
Worker is, we are assured, He who, because He is 
the Revealer, is called the "Word of God." (Jno. i. 
1-3.) Creation must be, then, part of this revela- 
tion. 

The parables and types of Scripture take up, 
therefore, and use Scripture to this end. They are 
not merely an adaptation of what has strictly an- 
other meaning. Rather, they develop what is there. 
It is in this way that they become so significant for 
the interpretation of nature. Analogies of this kind 
we argue from constantly without apology, and 
without suspicion of deception. They are the 
marks of the One Mind which everywhere delights 
to show itself to us, and thus would make all 
things intelligent to creature intelligence. The 
proof is that it really does this : as light, it illum- 
ines. 

The men of science have a name for a principle 
which underlies this. They call it the " principle 
of continuity." Of this Prof. Drummond has well 
said : — 



Nature in Scripture. 41 

" Probably the most satisfactory way to secure for one's 
self a just appreciation of the principle of continuity is to 
try to conceive the universe without it. The opposite of 
a continuous universe would be a discontinuous universe, 
an incoherent and irrelevant universe — as irrelevant in all 
its ways of doing things as an irrelevant person. In effect, 
to withdraw continuity from the universe would be the 
same as to withdraw reason from an individual. The 
universe would run deranged ; the world would be a mad 
world. . . . The authors of The Unseen Universe con- 
clude their examination of this principle by saying that 
* assuming the existence of a Supreme Governor of the 
Universe, the principle of continuity may be said to be the 
definite expression in words of our trust that He will not 
put us to permanent intellectual confusion, and we can 
easily conceive similar expressions of trust with regard to 
the other faculties of man.' " 

Now, if this be true, as it surely is, the continuity 
of Nature and Revelation is assured. It does not 
imply, as our author would seem to make it, that 
the book of nature will be the simpler to read, the 
surer to follow, therefore in fact the more authori- 
tative, but the reverse. For if nature-teaching be 
essentially that of parable, no parable is primarily 
authoritative as to doctrine ; and though still of an 
importance hard to be exaggerated, it leaves Scrip- 
ture as that in which alone God speaks to us "face 
to face." 

Yet nature remains unfallen from its place as the 
eldest of revelations. There is nothing fallen but 



42 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

man, and even his fall has only in a sense confirmed 
its witness to us as from Him to whom man's ruin 
is no surprise, and redemption no after-thought. 
Assuredly, such a world of conflict and destruction, 
beast preying upon beast, down to the minutest 
being that comes under the microscope, would be to 
an unfallen being an inharmonious and incongruous 
mystery. How striking, then, that we find the yet 
unfallen parents of our race shut off from it in a 
specially prepared and sheltered garden of delight, 
which might be for them a better witness of Creat- 
ing Love, — a memory of blessing to them when 
fallen. Then, when at last sent forth into the earth, 
with the new strife that had been awakened in their 
souls, they could find from the conflicting elements 
around, with which they were in so manifest sympa- 
thy, the assurance of omniscient foresight unde- 
ceived and undethroned. 

Has science done aught but deepen this thought, 
when it bids us note that the very ground they trod 
upon was already the wreck of former worlds? yet 
that mountain-upheaval, and glacier-plow, and the 
long list of catastrophic forces had been used of 
Him whom Scripture reveals as the God of resurre- 
tion, to prepare and fertilize and beautify their yet 
wondrous dwelling-place? 

And this Scripture also confirms, even though we 
may have been a long time coming to read it right, 



Nature in Scripture. 43 

and for this too are indebted, as they say, to science. 
Science did not, however, put it in the book of Gen- 
esis, that while God in the beginning created the 
heavens and the earth, before the first day's work 
the earth was waste and empty, and darkness on the 
face of the deep. Then the Spirit of God and His 
Word bring in the light, and the work of renewal 
begins. 

Here the analogy, then, is perfect. The history 
of the earth is the prophecy of the man who is to be 
put upon it ; and this prophecy proceeds step by 
step with the history of the six days, creation being 
the type of new creation, until the Man comes for 
whom all is destined, the first man here the type of 
the Second, Christ, who is the Heir of all. This 
can be shown even minutely, though here is neither 
time nor place ; and the spiritual significance is the 
seal of the natural, the perfect assurance of whose 
inspiration has guided Moses. But we must 
pass on. 

Spiritual law then governs the natural world. 
God, the Creator, is the " Father of spirits,'* and to 
spirits He speaks in it. Nature is, to him who has 
the key of it, one vast object-lesson of spiritual 
things. Did we know it, what a different world 
would the world be to us ! How full of reason 
would all things become ! How should day to day 
utter speech, and night to night tell knowledge ! 



44 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

How would we realize in our daily toil the presence 
of God ! How would all the natural sciences be- 
come Christian sciences, and only what was un- 
natural be at last unchristian ! A dream, you say? 
Well, then, at any rate, suffer a little while the 
dream ; and if it should after all be found so ra- 
tional as to fill all else with reason, so lightlike as 
to fill the whole landscape with color, warmth, and 
beauty, so spiritual as to connect all things with 
God, then it will be worth while, surely, to inquire 
how far the realism of such a dream can differ from 
reality itself. 

We take Scripture with us as we go forward — 
Scripture that cannot be broken, the true Ithuriel's 
spear by the touch of which all falsehood is discov- 
ered ; Scripture, not as the poor thing that men have 
made it, a rush that one cannot lean upon, a sensi- 
tive plant that shrinks from contact with the realities 
around, but as the weapon of the Spirit, sharper 
than any two-edged sword ; as the staff of the pil- 
grim, more trusted the more used ; yea, as the word 
of Him, from whom nothing is hid, and of that 
Spirit who "searcheth the deep things of God." 

There are wide fields before us, reader. Let us 
go forth. 



45 



CHAPTER IV. 

Natural Mathematics. 

MATHEMATICS give us the " exact sciences." 
"Solid" as Prof. Drummond tells us the 
laws of nature are, in mathematics at least 
they are so, beyond the possibility of intelligent 
question. No one, that I am aware, has ever ac- 
cused them of poetic license, although poetry on her 
side does not refuse their alliance. And as we build 
our foundations of what we can find most solid, it 
need be no wonder that in proportion as we go 
down to the foundations of the earth, so do we find 
mathematics more and more revealing themselves 
in proportional numbers and in geometric forms. 
Chemistry has become in our day penetrated with 
arithmetic ; and chemistry deals with those element- 
ary principles, the combination of which gives us 
the material world. "Chemistry," says Herschel, 
"is, in a most pre-eminent degree, the science of 
quantity ; and to enumerate the discoveries which 
have arisen for it from the mere determination of 
weights and measures would be nearly to give a 
synopsis of this branch of knowledge." 

What is this but as if you were to go into some 



46 Spiritual Laiv in the Natural World. 

ancient structure, as the pyramids, and find upon 
the stones the builder's hieroglyph ? We have been 
only learning to find deeper truth than we were at 
all aware of in the prophet's challenge, " Who hath 
measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and 
meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended 
the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the 
mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?" 
(Is. xl. 12.) What science of the day in which that 
question was asked knew any thing about such 
measurement? How many centuries has it taken 
to bring man's tardy feet to where the prophet 
stood ? But we are able now to see that w r e may 
take this as true in the most absolute way, that 
every bit of the earth's dust is weighed and meas- 
ured. 

11 The law of simple numerical ratios," says Dr. Cooke, 
"is the fundamental law of crystallography, and gives to 
the science a mathematical basis. Similar numerical re- 
lations appear when we study the formation of chemical 
compounds. I have already defined a chemical element as 
a substance which has never as yet been decomposed, 
and all the matter with which man is now acquainted is 
composed of one or more of at most seventy elementary 
substances. When two of these elements unite together 
to form a compound body, the proportions in which they 
combine are not decided by chance. You cannot unite 
these elementary substances in any proportion you please. 
The proportion in each case is determined by an unvary- 



Natural Mathematics, 47 

ing law, and the amounts required of either substance are 
weighed out by nature in her delicate scales with a nicety 
which no art can attain. Thus, for instance, 23 ounces 
of sodium will unite with exactly 35.5 ounces of chlorine; 
and if you use precisely these proportions of the two ele- 
ments, the whole of each will disappear, and become 
merged in the compound which is our common table salt. 
But if, in attempting to make salt, we bring together 
clumsily 23.5 ounces of sodium and 35.5 ounces of chlorine, 
Nature will simply put the extra half-ounce of sodium on 
one side, and the rest will unite. This law which governs 
all chemical combinations is known as ' the law of definite 
proportions.' 

11 Tables will be found in works on chemistry, which 
give, opposite to the name of each elementary substance, 
a numerical value, usually called its atomic weight, and 
and in all cases where the elements are capable of com- 
bining with each other, they either unite in the exact pro- 
portions indicated by these numbers, or else in some 
simple multiple of these proportions." 

Thus these elements are themselves manufac- 
tured articles, and are stamped indelibly with the 
Manufacturer's name. For nothing addresses it- 
self more to mind as from mind than just such rela- 
tions as are discovered here. As another has said, 
"The most careful structure of brown stone is not 
so precise in number, relation, and dimensions of its 
blocks as are molecules, the first terms in matter, in 
their atomic formation. " It should be as easy, then, 
to refer the natural product to the workmanship of 



48 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

eternal mind, as the recent structure to man's hand 
and mind. And who would have a doubt as to the 
latter ? 

Having got so far, moreover, ought we not to be 
able to go further? ought not these numbers individu- 
ally to have a voice for us, and in their relation to 
one another also ? If all things are full of reason, 
is it too much to expect that these proportions 
have a reason too? Oh, for some interpreter here ! 
some master mind, lowly and reverent enough to 
follow out this clue, and tell us whither it leads ! 
But we must not expect these elements to speak yet 
clearly. Pythagoras has given place to Darwin ; 
and final cause to formal cause ; and we must wait 
for the wheel to come round again. 

As to relations as indicated by the numbers we 
have just a hint : — 

"Attempts have been made in the same science," say 
M'Cosh & Dickie, in their work on " Typical Forms," 
"to form bodies into groups or congeners. M. Dumas, 
in particular, has detected a number of triads, or series of 
three bodies, which have analogous properties, and show- 
ing a singular numerical profession in their equivalent 
weights ; the equivalents of two of these added together, 
and divided by two, giving approximately the equivalent 
of the third, thus : — 

Chlorine 35 ) Potassium 40 ) 

Bromine > 80 Sodium > 24 

Iodine 125 ) Lithium 7 ) 



Natural Mathematics. 49 

Calcium 20 \ Sulphur 16 ) 

Strontium v 44 Selenium > 40 

Barium 69 ) Tellurium 64 ) 

111 Regarding,' says Faraday, i chlorine, bromine, and 
iodine as one triad, it will he seen that between the first 
and the last there is recognizable a well-marked progres- 
sion of qualities. Thus chlorine is a gas, under ordinary 
temperatures and pressures ; bromine, a fluid ; and iodine, 
a solid ; in this manner displaying a progression in the 
difference of cohesive force. Again, chlorine is yellow; 
bromine, red; iodine, black, or in vapor, a reddish violet.' " 

This glimmer of light seems to have well-nigh 
gone out. The atomic weight of some of these has 
been since doubled, and of others more or less 
changed. At the best, it carries us but a little way 
upon the road we seek. None the less sure is it 
that there is a numerical impress upon all nature. 

"Indeed," says Sir John Herschel again, "it is a char- 
acter of all the higher laws of nature to assume the form 
of a precise quantitative statement." 

And Humboldt declares, — 

"It may be said that the only remaining and widely 
diffused hieroglyphic characters still in our writing — num- 
bers — appear to us again as powers of the cosmos, al- 
though in a wider sense than that applied to them by the 
Italian school." 

Much more might be said here, but it needs not 
to try more to establish what no science of the day 
will attempt to dispute. It is the meaning of ad- 
mitted facts that we are seeking ; and this is just 



50 Spiritual Lazv in the Natural World. 

what is so hard to reach. Save in their testimony 
to an Author of nature, they are yet dumb and un- 
spiritual : how shall we spiritualize them? Is it not 
possible — yea, rather, may we not expect, that God 
has given us somewhere some clue to their interpre- 
tation, by which we may follow on to find ourselves 
more in the presence of the King? Nature seems 
to us as yet dumb, and God, if we own Him there, 
yet distant; where shall we find, then, the inter- 
preter we seek, if not in Revelation ? 



5i 



CHAPTER V. 

Spiritual Mathematics. 

THAT in her great typical system numbers have 
a place will be acknowledged by every stu- 
dent of Scripture. How far, however, both 
types and numbers pervade the whole is little 
understood, and will by many be with difficulty 
credited. It would lead us a long way round to try 
and prove it here, even though, I doubt not, the 
proof is most important.* We must content our- 
selves here with the proof of that which lies directly 
before us — the meaning of the numerals ; and even 
here be briefer than we would, content to know that 
the best proof of a key is, that it unlocks the door, 
the best proof of a light, that it gives light. Our 
proof, after all, will be that the meanings of the 
numerals gathered from Scripture, and of course 
illustrating Scripture-truth, will yet be found to 
throw a new light upon Nature. 

It should be no abatement of the value of this 
process if Nature be found by it to speak Scripture- 

* For the proof in brief, I would refer my readers to " The Numerical 
Structure of Scripture," published by Loizeaux Brothers, 63 Fourth 
Avenue, New York ; for the proof at large, to " The Numerical Bible," 
publishing quarterly by the same. 



52 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

truth, and the result should be in some sense the 
opposite of that which (by an opposite process) 
Prof. Drummond seems to have reached ; so that I 
may transfer a page of his preface to my own book, 
and appropriate it, only making Science and Relig- 
ion to change places. Let us see how it would look. 

11 They lay at opposite poles of thought ; and! for a time 
I succeeded in keeping the Science and the Religion shut 
off from one another in two separate compartments of my 
mind. Bnt gradually the wall of partition showed symp- 
toms of giving way. The two fountains of knowledge also 
slowly began to overflow, and finally their waters met and 
mingled. The great change was in the compartment that 
held the [Science]. It w r as not that the well there was 
dried ; still less that the fermenting waters were washed 
away by the flood of [Scripture]. The actual contents 
remained the same. But the crystals of former doctrine 
were dissolved; and as they precipitated themselves once 
more in definite forms, I observed that the Crystalline 
System was changed. ... In other words, the subject- 
matter [Science] had taken on the method of expression 
of [Scripture], and I discovered myself enunciating 
[Natural] Law in the exact terms of [Inspiration] and 
[Revealed Truth]. 

" Now this was not simply a [scriptural] coloring given 
to [Nature] — a mere freshening of the [scientific] air witk 
[spiritual] facts and illustrations. It was an entire re- 
casting of truth. And when I came seriously to consider 
what it involved, I saw, or seemed to see, that it meant 
essentially the introduction of [Spiritual] Law into the 
[Natural] World." 



Spiritual Mathematics. 53 

I trust Prof. Drummond will forgive the changes 
I have made in his statements here. I am sure that 
they are serious ; I only would that he might yet be 
able to adopt them for his own. Christians may 
well long for him that he may find spiritual truth 
conveyed in more " exact terms "by Paul and Peter 
than by Spencer and Huxley ; and natural truth 
also sweeter from the lips of one with whom God 
spake face to face, than from his with whom the 
only knowledge of Him is that He is unknowable. 

Let us take up our numerals, then. Scientists 
have told us that they pervade nature : surely we 
need not wonder if they have an important place in 
Scripture, or that being there they should speak 
there. Surely it is not unreasonable that the use of 
them should have its reason, — that He who has for- 
bidden idle words should Himself not speak one ! 

The great proof in an explanation, as I have said, 
is, that it explains. And yet there is that which, in 
the Scripture-meaning of numbers, commends itself 
to us at the outset, and that is, that it is natural. 
The God of nature uses things according to their 
nature. He does not use water to regenerate a soul. 
He does not change bread into something that to 
look and touch and taste remains the same but is 
not. And so the spiritual meaning of the numerals 
also has its roots in nature. This rule observed 
helps greatly to restrain the mere lawlessness of the 



54 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

imagination, of which we do well to be afraid. We 
can hardly go astray when all meanings of the 
number i must come under its cardinal form as 
unity, or under its ordinal, as primacy. Yet this 
number has the widest range of meaning of any. 
No doubt, it is also the simplest ; but in each, some 
natural thought governs or leads to the spiritual, — 
already a hint as to nature-teaching ; for the natu- 
ral is no more alien to the spiritual than the body 
to the soul which it enshrines and expresses. 

The numerical series is also a very brief one. As 
in music seven notes in their combinations furnish 
all our wealth of harmony, so seven numbers give 
the whole range of choral anthem which all nature 
sends up to God. These added to or multiplying 
one another can produce all else. And that the 
series really ends with this, Scripture makes plain 
by its use of 7 always for that which is in some 
sense perfect, though it may be evil as well as good. 
The number has thus its root-meaning in nature 
clearly, w T hich Scripture only takes up and confirms. 
How plainly is it shown us, thus, that the whole 
series is a harmony, and that in it Nature finds her 
voice in praise ! A good thought to begin with, is it 
not? We find it confirmed in this, that the number 
8 is always significant of a new start — a new begin- 
ning, as the eighth day is the beginning of a new 
week. 8 is the spiritual chord — the octave, just 



Spiritual Mathematics. 55 

marking in its fresh commencement that the former 
series is complete. 

Let us test these things by some examples. Seven 
times God pronounces His work at the beginning 
good ; and on the seventh day He rests, and sanc- 
tifies it. Here is evidently the foundation of its 
meaning in Scripture. From this first week Israel 
derived her weeks of days and years, and weeks of 
weeks of years, or jubilee periods. The trumpet of 
the jubilee sounded in the seventh month of the 
year, upon the day of atonement. In Revelation, 
seven seals secure completely the book taken by the 
Lamb ; seven candlesticks present the Church as 
the light of the world in the night of the Lord's 
absence ; seven lamps of fire burning before the 
throne picture the " seven spirits of God" — the 
various energy of the one Spirit of God. Later, in 
the seven vials poured out upon the earth is " filled 
up the wrath of God." 

The connection of the numbers 7 and 8 is illus- 
trated by examples which depend for their force 
upon no recondite typical significance. Thus the 
Lord represents the unclean spirit who returns to 
the man out of whom he had gone, with seven other 
spirits more wicked than himself. But this makes 
eight, and brings about the "last state" which "is 
worse than the first." 

So the "ten horns" of Daniel's fourth bea$t have 



56 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

three rooted up before the eleventh " little horn," 
and become, therefore, with this, eight ; and then 
results the last state of the beast, in which judgment 
falls upon it. In Rev. xvii., where from another 
side the same things are seen, the eighth head gives 
to the beast its last blasphemous form, and " goeth 
into perdition. " 

The types of the Old Testament have many sim- 
ilar examples, which a very little examination will 
reveal to the inquirer. We need not perhaps pro- 
duce more here. Another and very striking proof 
of the concord between nature and Scripture has 
now to be considered. 

Scripture has its own methods of division of the 
numerals it employs, and the number 7 is no excep- 
tion to this. As being a prime number, it cannot, 
of course, be subject to true division, but is well 
known by many to be divided in Scripture almost 
uniformly into 4 + 3. Thus in the sevenfold view 
of the kingdom of heaven in the thirteenth chapter 
of Matthew, the first four parables are spoken to 
the multitude at large, the last three to the disciples 
in the house ; and this corresponds to a real differ- 
ence of application, — the first four giving the ex- 
ternal view of the kingdom, patent to the world at 
large, while the last three give the internal and 
divine view. 

Again, in the opening of the seven seals in Reve- 



Spiritual Mathematics. 57 

lation, the first four are introduced by the cry of 
the living creatures, "Come,"* and in each case a 
horseman answers to the call ; the last three have 
no such introduction. 

In the trumpet-series, the last three are marked 
off from the first four as special "woes;" and the 
division is strongly emphasized. 

In the addresses to the seven churches, the same 
division is found, but less manifest ; and in Scrip- 
ture generally there are numbers of similar septen- 
ary series divided after the same manner, the proof 
of which would require more space than is available 
for us now. 

There is meaning, of course, in this division. We 
have assumed it at least as a principle, — the only 
one that could be at all fruitful in an inquiry like 
the present, that whatever is, whether in nature or 
the Word of God, has its raison d'etre, — can give 
some intelligible account of itself; otherwise, why 
look for it? And it is just because things are so 
little sought for that they are so little found. To 
find the meaning here, we must anticipate, however, 
what has not yet been brought out, but what we 
shall have shortly to look at, so that it will be only 
slightly out of place to produce it here. 

Four, then, we shall see shortly to be the world- 
number, or that which speaks of the creature; 

*The most approved reading. 



58 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

proof will be full as we advance ; three is the number 
of manifestation, — that of the Trinity, in which God 
is alone fully manifest. The 4 + 3, then, into which 
a septenary series is so often divided, combining 
these meanings, speaks of the creature as that in 
His relation to which now God is manifested ; and 
thus it completely answers to its end. God rests, 
therefore, in satisfaction with His work, on the 
seventh day. 

If clearness and consistency can avail to make it, 
this interpretation, then, may be allowed to stand. 
But we have now a strange, even startling, corre- 
spondence from the side of nature, which will de- 
velop more significance as we proceed. If the seven 
notes of music are the natural root of the Scripture 
meaning, it is to music we may look for any obtain- 
able help further. How striking, then, is the division 
of these notes in music ! Upon the key-board of a 
piano we find them arranged thus : — 



TTTTT 

12 3 4 5 6 7 



B 



D 



the five black notes are grouped as 3 and 2 : three 
black notes divide four white ones ; and again, two 



Spiritual Mathematics. 59 

black notes divide three white ones. The seven 
white notes accept the scriptural division into 4 
and 3 ! 

Here is a clue which we must follow ; but we are 
not prepared to do so yet. We shall have first to 
inquire as to the meaning of the other numbers, 
which it is plain we can now arrange upon the key- 
board without difficulty. As yet, indeed, they do 
not speak ; but they have at least approached articu- 
late utterance. They seem already to intimate their 
accord with Scripture when it tells us that in rela- 
tion to the creature God shall be manifested. Will 
they do more than this ? We will go on and see, at 
least. 

One. 
It has been said that the first number has really 
but two thoughts fundamental to it. As a cardinal 
number, it speaks of unity; as an ordinal, of primacy. 
No proof is needed that of these it does speak. 

But the application of these thoughts may be 
wide and far-reaching. With regard to unity, this 
may exclude a second, or exclude simply difference ; 
and the latter may be either external or internal. 
"The Lord our God is one Lord" excludes abso- 
lutely another Lord ; and this implies on His part 
sufficiency which needs no other, and independency 
which admits no other. And these, again, imply 
His eternity. 



60 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

Or it may exclude external difference ; and 
speak thus of identity, identification ; or simply 
of peace. 

Or it may exclude internal difference, as where 
Joseph says, "The dream is one." It may thus 
speak of harmony of parts or attributes, — of con- 
sistency, congruity. Or else of individuality, — in 
the highest way, personality; in the lowest, perhaps, 
of life, which is the basis of all true individuality, 
Integrity, again, is "wholeness," oneness. 

Now, as an ordinal number, the first, the begin- 
ning : He who is in true active energy the begin- 
ning, is Creator, Life-giver, Father ; counsel and 
election connect with it ; and sovereignty is implied 
in all of this. 

Two. 

The number 2 is the contradiction of the first 
number : there is now another. In a good sense, it 
speaks of addition, increase, growth; and so of help, 
confirmation, fellowship. Our word "seconding '' 
expresses these latter thoughts. (Comp. Eccles. iv. 
9-12.) Here we have, — 

1. Confirmation in the way of testimony: "The 
testimony of two men is true." And we have seen 
that the power of this confirmation depends much 
on the diversity of the witnesses (2 being the ex- 
pression of difference). 



Spiritual Mathematics. 61 

2. Salvation, help. 

3. Dependence, humilation, service: " seconding " 
again assists the thought. 

Notice, now, that in Christ, the second Person of 
the Godhead, all these thoughts unite. Twofold in 
nature, who can unite in one person such diversity 
as He ? He is the Second Man. He is the true 
Witness and the Word of God. He is the Saviour. 
He was the dependent, lowly Man, humbling Him- 
self even to death for our salvation. This whole 
meaning, thus far, attaches to, and holds forth to 
us, Christ. 

But on the other side, as the number of difference, 
and the first number that divides, the number 2 
speaks of contrast, contradiction, conflict, enmity, — 
of separation, death, which is that and the "last 
enemy." Yet here again, as if Christ must be 
everywhere Master, the cross, in which the conflict 
between good and evil, the enmity of man's heart, 
the power of the enemy, death in its most awful 
form, are found, — is once again salvation. Nowhere 
is the contrast so great, the contradiction so ex- 
treme, as in the cross. 

Two is naturally also woman's number, and she 
illustrates it well. Full again of contradictions, — 
dependent on man, yet his helpmeet ; and yet again 
the one through whom the breach came ; the type 
of increase, yet through whom came death, and then 



62 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

once more, through her victorious "Seed," salva- 
tion. Surely these numbers speak ! 

Three. 
We come now to 3 : and for what does 3 stand ? 
Plainly it is the symbol of cubic measure — solid 
measure — the measure of content. " Take any two 
dimensions, and multiply them together: what have 
you ? A measure of surface merely. Take a third 
dimension ; now you have more than surface : this 
third dimension strikes in deep below the surface, 
and gives you a measure of solidity. 3 stands, then, 
for what is solid, real, substantial. What are length 
and breadth without thickness? A line that you 
can draw upon paper is more than that." 

Three is the number of Persons in the Godhead, 
— of the divine fullness, therefore, — and until we 
reach this, God is not fully manifested. It is 
evidently the number of actualization, realization, 
manifestation. It is the number of the Spirit, who 
realizes in the creature the counsels of God. 

"When the deep lay over the waste and desolate 
earth, the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of 
the waters. When men are born again to God, the 
gospel comes to them, not in word only, but in 
power, and in the Holy Ghost. What is sanctifica- 
tion — the work of the Spirit — but that in which 
salvation is realized in the soul ? Without the work 
of the Spirit, there is nothing but outside work : 



Spiritual Mathematics. 63 

'that which is born of the Spirit is spirit;' this is 
that third dimension which every saint has." 

Beautifully, therefore, — one of those deep harmo- 
nies of Scripture which, lying everywhere under the 
surface, give such full attestation of its truth, — the 
sanctuary in Israel, God's dwelling-place among 
them, was a cube, — of ten cubits in the tabernacle, 
twenty in the temple ; while the new Jerusalem, the 
final city of God, which the glory of God lightens, 
is a cube also: "the length and the breadth and 
the height of it are equal." Here all the counsels 
of God have realized themselves at last. Here the 
holiness long sought for from man is at last attained. 

In the sanctuary God manifests Himself. Res- 
urrection too, always connected in Scripture with 
the third day, is that in which, when all mere human 
hope is at an end, God manifests Himself. Christ 
was "declared to be the Son of God with power, 
according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection 
of the dead." (Rom. i. 4, R. V.) 

Revival, restoration, recovery, connect themselves 
with this ; and all this man's sanctification is. It is 
his resurrection out of that state of spiritual death 
in which naturally men are. Once again, let us 
note, how perfect are these harmonies ! and how 
they attest the truth of that in which they are found ! 

The underlying thought in sanctification is, a sep- 
aration to; and so even Christ, going back to the 



64 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

Father, but as Man to take a new position for men 
with God, says, " And for their sakes I sanctify 
Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the 
truth." So were the priests of old sanctified or set 
apart to the work of the priesthood. And this 
thought of setting apart to some special office we 
shall find most important in the application of this 
number to natural things. For the present, we are 
confining ourselves to Scripture, as that in which 
these numbers first find voice ; we are learning the 
language of that which is then to be our interpreter 
in another sphere. 

Four. 
We come now to 4, a number in which we find 
the first that is capable of true division. It is a 
number, therefore, which naturally suggests passivity 
and weakness; and as we have now got beyond the 
numbers which speak of Deity, we naturally connect 
this with the thought of the creature, — the material 
which submits itself to the divine hand, and may 
(alas !) to another. Notice, again, that it is 2, the 
first number which divides, that divides it ; and 
here we have seen what speaks often of the 
enemy's work. 

Scripture justifies this application fully. Four is 
recognized in Scripture as the world-number, — that 
of the "four corners" of the earth, of earthly com- 
pleteness and universality, which has thus on it, 



Spiritual Mathematics. 65 

however, the stamp of weakness, whatever man 
may boast. It is the number of the four winds of 
heaven, the various and opposing influences which 
show the divided, diverse conditions to which the 
earth is subject, and which make it the place of such 
various experience, and practical testing for man. 
And this, too, opens the way once more to the 
thought of failure. The fourth book of Moses — 
Numbers, as the history of Israel's journey through 
the wilderness, type of our own world-warfare and 
pilgrimage, illustrates all these thoughts. 

We shall find this number stamped upon nature 
in her four kingdoms, which a science based upon 
what is wholly material would reduce to three, thus 
taking away man's birthright, and sending him out, 
Nebuchadnezzarlike, among the beasts. But this 
in him was madness, and under divine judgment, — 
thank God, temporary also : Scripture and nature 
both, if they are listened to, will restore him to his 
place. 

Five. 
The next two numbers have more difficulty. Let 
us pause briefly to connect what we have ascertained 
as to the whole series, and to gather what hints we 
may as to what yet remains. 

We have seen that the whole number is 7, the 
number of perfection ; and that this number is 
composed of 4 and 3. These numbers also have 



66 Spiritual Lazv in the Natural World. 

been investigated, and their meaning read, if it be 
but partially. Four we have seen to be the number 
of the world, or of the creature, the first three 
numbers those which speak of God. It is striking 
here that in Scripture 4 is often thus divided in its 
peculiar way, and not by mere arithmetical rules, 
as 3 and 1, Take the four gospels as an example, 
where the first three have been called, from their 
accordant view, the " synoptic" gospels, while 
John's, in its many marked peculiarities, stands in 
a division apart. It is the divine nature of Christ 
upon which he characteristically dwells, as is evi- 
dent, and this dominates and differentiates the 
whole book. 

But this 3 and 1 have again their meaning, and, 
as combining in 4, speak of the creature as manifest- 
ing (3) the Creator (1). And this is evidently what 
— at least according to Scripture — creation does. 
This the numbers as a whole suggest. The 4 + 3 
which make up 7 we have already interpreted 
almost similarly. What is, in fact, the difference ? 
If these meanings and distinctions of meaning be 
indeed of God, they will sustain the fullest investi- 
gation, and be helped by it : what difference, then, 
do these numbers naturally suggest ? Is it not this, 
that in the one case (as 3 -f 1 =4) the manifesta- 
tion of God is in the creature ; while in 4 + 3> the 
fuller numbers, and the way in which they appear 



Spiritual Mathematics, 67 

side by side, suggest the whole relationship of God 
to the creature as that which manifests Him?* 

At any rate, it seems evident, from this division 
of the whole series into 4 and 3, that we are now to 
take this 4 as a whole number — that of the creature, 
to which, to make up the last three, we are to add 
once more the divine ones. Five will be thus a 
4 -f- 1 ; 6, a 4 -|- 2 ; and 7, what we have seen it to 
be. Nature, as we have seen also, in the last case 
justifies this thought : what will it do as to the pre- 
ceding numbers ? 

Now the most familiar 5 that occurs to me is 
found in the human hand. How striking, then, to 
find, at the first glance here, the division into 4 and 
1 ! Look narrowly, — the more narrowly the better. 
These four fingers, how clearly in themselves they 
imply weakness ! Think what these fingers would 
be without the thumb ! And then this opposing 
thumb itself, strong and single, as if it would rep- 
resent the help of the One God ministered to the 
weakness of His creatures, — may it not remind us 
that this human capacity of which the hand speaks 
is just weakness itself except the power of God go 
with it? Are these things mere imaginings, morbid 



*This view is only suggested as a deduction from the numbers 
themselves. The testing of it by Scripture involves more research 
than I have yet been able to give ; and only the confidence gained 
from an acquaintance of years with this method and its results 
could embolden me to offer it. 



68 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

broodings of the theological mind ? Why, then, do 
they seem so singularly to unite together? Why 
are the dreams so consistent ? 

But the measure of capacity is the measure of 
responsibility, and here the 4 + 1 once more speak 
of the creature in relation to the Creator, — of the 
government of God as approached from the 
creature-side. "And the throne of God thus 
approached is encompassed with clouds and dark- 
ness. The divine ways with him give him constant 
and needed exercise, though the throne is there, 
steadfast and towering above the clouds. Five will 
be found [in Scripture] constantly associated with 
this thought of exercise under responsibility j but also 
with the kindred one that, under God, the way, 
according to its character, leads to a corresponding 
end. This whole lesson Deuteronomy, the fifth 
book of Scripture, enforces throughout." 

Thus far, then, the meaning which has been 
suggested as to these last three numbers is con- 
firmed by the present one : "the creature in relation 
to the almighty Creator " seems its fundamental 
thought. 

Six. 
Six is another number which seems to speak of re- 
lation to God, but a very different relation. It is the 
number of the days of man's work-day week, the 
appointed term of his labor, type of his life-labor, 



Spiritual Mathematics. 69 

his " few and evil days," limited because of sin. It 
is the second number which is not a prime. Di- 
vided as 4 and 2, it is the creature in relation to 
him who has wrought in it disaster and ruin, but 
on the other hand to Him who is the Deliverer 
from it. Thus it is the number which shows the 
creature as & fallen creature, and God's victory over 
the evil, by which He is gloriously displayed. 

In its use in Scripture it implies sin in its full 
development, limited and controlled by God, who 
thus glorifies Himself in the issue of it. The 
number of the beast in Revelation is a striking and 
well-known instance of the use of this number, 666, 
— evil in fullest activity, yet its feebleness ever 
apparent, and God's hand imposing its limit. Its 
number is the number of its name — stamps it, that 
is, as what it is, and is only "the number of a man," 
though vainly and impiously aspiring to be as God. 

In the field which we propose to traverse, we 
shall find little of this number ; and that, I think, 
for obvious reasons, which only confirm the mean- 
ing of it ; but on that account it need be the less 
dwelt on now. Here, then, our brief glance at the 
numbers ends ; for of 7 all is probably said that 
need be. We have therefore now our vocabulary 
ready, which is to be employed in the translation of 
language still more hidden. Nature keeps well her 
secrets, and yet keeps them after all to reward the 



yo Spiritual Lazv in the Natural World. 

diligent : as the wise man says, " It is the glory of 
God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings to 
search out a matter." (Prov. xxv. 2.) And " through 
wisdom is a house builded, and by understanding it 
is established ; and by knowledge shall the cham- 
bers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches. ,, 
(Chap. xxiv. 3, 4.) 



7i 

CHAPTER VI. 

Tones and Undertones. 

WE now proceed directly to the interpretation 
of nature in the light of Scripture. And 
here the first question must be, as to the 
light itself : is it truly this ? Does Nature, read by 
Scripture, speak as Scripture does ? Are these two 
witnesses accordant ? 

We have not undertaken to verify Scripture ac- 
cording to the ordinary methods. We assume for 
the present also that what ordinary evangelical 
orthodoxy holds for truth is in its main features a 
fair representation of the doctrine of the Bible. We 
are entitled to do this, because what we propose is 
(though much more than this,) a method of verifi- 
cation. We are going, not to argue about the light, 
but to use it. It is wonderful how little argument 
of this kind there is in the Bible, and how much 
more convincing and universal is its appeal to men 
on that account. 

If numbers are being made to appear as " powers 
of the cosmos," — and if all the higher laws of nature 
are more and more finding numerical expression, — 
then it is natural to seek here in an especial way the 



72 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

mind in Nature, mathematics bearing so strongly 
the impress of mind. And if the laws of harmony 
are clearly pervaded by mathematics, and the dia- 
pason actually govern in turn the numerical system 
of the Bible, then here we should appear to have 
found the most hopeful direction for discovery of 
the kind we are seeking. Moreover, we have made 
at least one discovery, that would seem a most, en- 
couraging one, that in its primary division the 
Scripture-series is one with the harmonic. May we 
not trust, then, to find it even wholly so, and by 
this door to reach an assured and open road to the 
region we desire so earnestly to examine ? 

The division of the 7 into 4 and 3 has done more 
than discover to us the harmony thus far between 
Nature and Scripture. It enables us to give every 
note of the series its numerical place, in which F 
stands, therefore, as the first, and E as the final 
note. Without this, we could not proceed a step ; 
and the help given by this discovery is thus indeed 
a great one. 

But what of the black notes upon the board? 
Have they, it may be asked, no title to be reckoned ? 
If all this is to have voice, ought not they also to be 
heard ? or will it not be caprice to listen to some 
witnesses and to reject others whose testimony, if 
but negative, must be of very great importance? 
The black notes are, of course, semitones, — the 



Tones and Undertones. 73 

notes half way between those on either side, and 
which are sharp in reference to those which precede, 
and flat in regard to those which follow them. But 
thus it is evident that five semitones are to be added 
to the original seven notes in order to get the full 
compass of the diapason. Here, then, it seems as 
if we must first ask ourselves, what is meant by this 
new enumeration ? Has it any meaning that we 
can discover? And is it in contradiction to what 
we seemed just now to have reached ? or may it still 
by any possibility be consistent with it ? 

It is encouraging indeed to have to answer, It is 
even more than consistent with it, — it is confirma- 
tory of the meaning before gathered from the sep- 
tenary arrangement and its division, and endows it 
only with fuller meaning ! 

As for the septenary notation, let the key-board 
speak. Its presence there attests its practical reality 
and value to the musician. Its correspondence with 
Scripture gives it twofold witness. Why, then, the 
12, which has also reality, and should, one would 
say, have meaning, no less than the other ? 

Now in taking this, for settlement, to Scripture, 
we shall make this new discovery, that 7 and 12 -are 
numbers, according to it, most intimately allied. 
12, wherever it is found as a series in Scripture, is 
found, perhaps without exception, to be divided into 
4 times 3, as 7 is into 4 and 3. The factors are the 



74 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

same, although differently combined. As I have 
elsewhere said of it, " It is only in the relation of 
the two numbers to one another that it differs from 
7 : the number of the world and that of divine 
manifestation characterize it ; but these are not side 
by side merely. It is God manifesting Himself in 
[relation to] the world of His creation, as 7 is, but 
now in active energy laying hold of and transform- 
ing it. Thus 12 is the number of manifest sover- 
eignty, as it was exercised in Israel by the Lord 
in the midst of them, or as it will be exercised 
in the world to come." 

Turn now to the complete rest of the people of 
God, — to that new Jerusalem which has the glory 
of God, whose light God is, and the Lamb the lamp 
of it; to which the Lord God Almighty and the 
Lamb are the temple. Here perfection and rest 
are found if any where, the thought connected, as 
is abundantly plain, with 7 : yet what do we find ? 
Look at the foundations of the city : they are twelve 
in number. Look at the gates: there are twelve gates. 
Measure the city: its length and breadth and height 
are equal, — twelve thousand furlongs each. Meas- 
ure the height of the wall : a hundred and forty-four 
cubits — 12 x 12. Behold the tree of life, planted 
by the river that issues from the throne of God : it 
bears twelve manner of fruits, and yields its fruit 
every month. Everywhere this number 12 meets us 



Tones and Undertones. 75 

where we might expect the 7. It has the factors of 
7 : it is. as it were, the expansion of the 7 ; and the 
spiritual idea which shines through it, that God is 
everywhere the manifest Ruler, what does it speak 
of to our hearts but complete subjection to Him, 
the perfection of the creature, and its rest ? 

Thus the 12 is indeed the expanded 7 ; and the 
musical scale, as interpreted by Scripture, is in its 
every aspect, as in its internal meaning, really one. 

We may go on, then, with increased confidence, 
to that for which it will be indeed taxed to the 
utmost : not because of scanty results accruing 
from our search, but rather from the contrary. The 
new language we are learning will seem to lead into 
such quaint lore from Nature's library that we shall 
be tempted to think we are dreaming, or in the 
hallucination of disease : we shall need to probe 
ourselves with sharp inquiry, to see it we are awake, 
and to examine our road, to see if it be on solid 
earth, or marsh. Yet what is more certain than 
that the numbers of which we speak are really in 
nature? and what more simple than to gage the 
value of each by what we find in Scripture, free as 
it must be from all suspicion of bribed witness? 
Then, if, after all, they tell a consistent story, why 
should we refuse it, even though it should speak 
more theologically than for some reason we have 
concluded it to have the right to speak ? 



76 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

We come, then, in the next place, to consider the 
keys. They are of three kinds — sharps or flats 
mainly, with one natural key, which, save as acci- 
dentals, has neither sharps nor flats. The sharp 
keys raise certain notes regularly half a tone; the 
flats, on the other hand, lower them half a tone. 
The one represent, therefore, a forward and upward 
tendency; the other, a downward and backward 
one. The natural key represents neither the one 
nor the other, but a condition of rest between the 
two. Every key, moreover, has its special key-note, 
the fundamental one, to which all its melodies con- 
duct, and where they rest at last. What, then, is 
the key-note of the natural key, the equilibrial an- 
them, the motion which is repose ? It is C of the 
musical scale, 5 of the numerical series. And to 
what does this answer scripturally ? We have only 
to compare our table. The fundamental thought 
connected with 5 is " the creature in relation to the 
Creator," or what is signified by the prophetical 
name of Him who, to fulfill it, was called " Jesus" 
— " Emmanuel," "God with us." 

This is the central note of the musical scale — the 
rest-note, one may say, of the whole. From this 
the sharp keys stretch upward, the flats measure 
downward. Could any thing be more appropriate, 
more beautiful, than this, if the whole of the scale 
had been planned by some fanatic spiritualist, eager 



Tones and Undertones. JJ 

to press the universe into the service of the gospel ? 
Find me, in the range of this numerical series, any 
number that shall be so justly the centre and meet- 
ing-place of all spiritual harmonies as this, in which 
God and man meet together, and the " Father of 
eternity" is a " child born" whose name is "The 
Mighty God"? 

Here God is God indeed, and man is only rightly 
man. Each is in his place, — man in the weakness 
which so claims God, and God in the almightiness 
which can meet creature-need with unexhausted 
fullness. It is no wonder, then, that a fifth should 
be both the measure of the steps by which the sharp 
keys rise from the central note, and the measure 
also by which the flat keys descend from it. But 
what, then, do these movements represeut ? As 
God and man are both together at the centre, it 
seems as if God's action might be represented in 
the one of the two, man's action in the other. And 
this action backward as well as downward seems 
well fitted to be man's as that upward and forward 
is of God. 

But they have met in the centre : are they, then, 
now separating from one another ? God forbid ! all 
here is order, not disorder, — harmony, not discord. 
The keys stretch, but do not separate, from the 
centre : they remain ever in perfect relation to it. 
It is in this, we may say, they have their root, even 



78 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

as where God and man are not together we can 
have no music. And in the gospel God has shown 
us how possible it is to meet Him, and find Him for 
us, when as yet we realize nothing but ungodliness 
and impotence: "When we were yet without 
strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly;" 
and "to him that worketh not, but believeth on 
Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted 
for righteousness." 

From this point there is yet, therefore, progress, 
upward and downward, — upward, for the purpose 
of God is man's exaltation; downward, for "he that 
humbleth himself shall be exalted." Thus both these 
series, the upward and the downward, may have 
reference to man ; and yet the upward speak none 
the less of divine action : for God alone can exalt, 
and it is in His dealings with His creatures that He 
glorifies Himself. Each step of progress in both 
directions is marked by this number 5, for the 
central thought is thus sustained all through. 
Throughout, God and man are still together ; and 
throughout, each still keeps his place. It is the 
only possible way of blessing that this should be so. 

Let us follow the descending series first. Here, 
in the flat keys, we have really but one series of 
numbers, while in the sharps we have a double series. 
The reason is, that in the flats, the key-note always 
coincides with the flat added the previous time< We 



Tones and Undertones. 79 

have thus but a single series of notes or numbers, 
which, if the suggestion above be right, we must 
interpret throughout as relating to man and not to 
God. Let us put them as a series, applying our key, 
as we best may. We have, then, — 



The key of one flat, 


F 


(1) 


"integrity." 


two flats 


,B 


W 


"weakness." 


three " 


E 


(7) 


"rest in perfection." 


four " 


A 


(3) 


"sanctiflcation." 


five " 


D 


(6) 


"victory over evil." 


six " 


G 


00 


"service." 


seven" 


C 


(5) 


"reward." 



We close with the seventh key because of the 
number itself, as we know it, and because we have 
gone through, thus, all the numbers. The final key 
certainly yields a very appropriate number for the 
end of the series, — a somewhat remarkable series, 
even at first sight, although it may not seem to 
present the regular "pilgrim's progress," which we 
might suppose it would. I believe a close compari- 
son with the stages of the divine work in the first 
chapter of Genesis, type as it is of that in the indi- 
vidual soul, would develop a very striking corre- 
spondence, which it would require, however, many 
pages to bring out. A main difficulty is, that with 
the great diversity of experiences among Christians 
of which we must be conscious, there is so little 
agreement as to the order of attainment and the 
meaning of most important terms. What, for in- 



80 Spiritual Lazv in the Natural World. 

stance, is " sanctification "? How differently do 
sincere Christians write and speak of this ! I shall 
make, therefore, but few and brief remarks upon 
what is before us. 

As the basis of all Christian experience, we must 
have come to God in Christ, — a thing already indi- 
cated for us, as we have seen, in the key-note of the 
natural scale, the point of departure for the whole 
series. We meet Him with no consciousness but 
that of sin, are justified as ungodly; not as having 
worked for it, but receiving it as grace, through 
faith. Thus brought to God, the grace we have 
realized to be in Him operates to divorce us from 
sin, and to beget in us the guileless spirit which 
according to the Psalmist accompanies forgiveness. 
(Ps. xxxii. 2.) There is, for the first time in any 
true sense, — 

INTEGRITY 

before God. " Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone," 
is the longing desire of the heart ; and this is 
plainly the first necessity for growth. A " double- 
minded man" lacks every condition for progress, 
plainly. 

But with the heart thus right, the desire and in- 
tention of obedience implanted in it, there will be 
naturally at first no proper consciousness of the 
impotence in us which may accompany a right will. 
The apprehension of — 



Tones and Undertones. 81 

WEAKNESS 

has to be, as the apostle shows us it is, the condition 
of strength. The path of progress is here a steep 
descent into the valley of humiliation. " No confi- 
dence in the flesh " has to be learnt, and that all 
^//"-confidence, even in the Christian, is confidence 
in the flesh. Holiness is not to be attained by self- 
occupation, nor the power of the Spirit of God 
found for self-complacency and Pharisaism. Here 
the scriptural remedy is most simple, yet too little 
known, — the cross of Christ, as the judgment of all 
that we are in nature and practice, so that we can 
turn away from ourselves to Him who is before God 
for us, and in whom we are, " accepted in the Be- 
loved." In Christ we can see ourselves without the 
least stain or touch of sin, we can be occupied with 
ourselves without self-occupation ; "in Christ" thus, 
we can realize that "old things are passed away, 
and all things are become new," and — 

REST IN PERFECTION 

outside ourselves, yet ours. Nothing will, nothing 
ought to, satisfy us but perfection. To find it in 
ourselves would be to lose it; to find it in Christ is 
to find it available for all our need, but leaving us 
to glory in Him only. " We are the circumcision, 
who worship God in the spirit, and glory in Christ 
Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh" 
The result is, practical — 



82 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

SANCTIFICATION, 

for Christ is " made of God to us sanctification." 
" We all with open face beholding the glory of the 
Lord, are changed into the same image from glory 
to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit." A heart 
upon a heavenly object means, of necessity a heart 
outside the world. He who could say, "To me, to 
live is holiness " would leave out Christ. He who 
can with the apostle say, "To me, to live is Christ" 
will of necessity be holy. 

How simple, how blessed, then, is God's way of 
sanctification ! But it is the way too of all success. 
How mighty in prayer will he be to whom to live is 
Christ ! How quiet and assured may he be as to 

VICTORY OVER EVIL 

who is thus linked in heart with Christ! 

"He always wins who sides with God: 
To him no chance is lost : 
God's will is sweetest to him when 
It triumphs at his cost." 

Christ's banner never floated yet in an uncon- 
quered field. 

Thus far, then, there has been in this series a real 
and connected progress of thought. We have had 
no difficulty in tracing it ; and it seems already to 
be in some sense complete. Yet the two closing 
members of it could hardly be omitted without loss, 
and they come in with undeniable fitness where 



Tones and Undertones. 83 

they do. Who would leave out of this catalogue of 
blessing, brief though it be, — 

service ? 
and who can separate it from that which divine 
love has ordained to follow it, — 

reward ? 
Thus our pilgrim has got within the gate. The 
series is manifestly complete. 

What shall we say of it, now that it has ended ? 
Is it any thing more than an ingenious play of fancy ? 
Can we reckon, after all, this theological lesson as 
among the certainties of science ? We neither have 
the will nor the power to decide this for our readers. 
That the numbers to be interpreted are there 
seems evident ; that their interpretation is by a 
table of meanings which have their roots in nature 
itself seems equally so ; that Scripture sustains and 
verifies these meanings is capable of receiving ex- 
tended proof,* There we must for the present 
leave it ; but our search in this direction is not 
yet over : we have still to consider the sharp 
keys. 

Here we have a movement upward and forward, 
with halts at the same intervals of a fifth as before, 
by which the 5 which is our starting-point is carried 
continuously with us. Here the key-note lies next 
beyond the added sharp ; so that we have a double 
* See " The Numerical Bible," passim. 



84 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

series, of sharps and key-notes, to consider. Let 
us construct our table. 

SHARPS. KEY-NOTE. 

1 " F (1) The Father; G (2) Christ. 

2 " C (5) Divine governm't; D (6) Victory over evil. 

3 " G (2) Christ; A (3) Sanctification (by blood 

and Spirit) . 

4 " D (6) Conqueror; E (7) Perfection and rest. 

5 " A (3) Holy Spirit; B (4) Weakness of creature. 

6 " E (7) Perfect work; F (1) Kingdom of the Father. 

This table is naturally more complex than the 
former one. Note that the spiritual movement 
indicated we have already suggested as one from 
God to man, and that this governs, therefore, in the 
interpretation of the numbers. Note also that with 
the sixth key (which is the last generally recognized 
in music) we have returned again to the point from 
which we set out ; the cycle is complete : we set out 
from God and have returned to God again. 

Not simply from God either, but from the Father. 
Notice, once more, that our series follows the order 
of Scripture and of the creeds : the first double pair 
of numbers speaks of the Father; the second, of the 
Son; the third, of the Spirit; and the numbers 
themselves bind us to this, — we have no alternative ! 
Yet why should the numbers be as they are? All 
but one are represented here, and how is it that 
every one turns up in its necessary place to work out 
this result? If it be chance, how slender a chance 



Tones and Undertones, 85 

was there of such a thing ! the law of probabilities 
would say, at least, millions to one against it. 

But this is not all. Among these seven numbers, 
six of which have found their place, there is just one 
which, if it had come in in the first row, would have 
spoiled all. This is 4, the number of the creature, 
and which in a movement from God to man would 
have been in this place an absolute negation of such 
meaning. It should not therefore appear, and it is 
the only number which should not. It should not, 
and it does not. Is all this still chance ? Add all 
that we have seen before. Surely all sober reason- 
ing is against the thought of any possible delusion 
in following these things to their full result. 

In any movement from God to man, we begin, 
then, scripturally and necessarily, with the — 

FATHER. 

"To us," says the apostle, " there is but one God, 
the Father, of whom are all things." And in His 
counsel toward man there is but one word that 
explains the whole — is the true key-note, Every 
Christian heart knows it, and it is affirmed here by 
nature and in song : it is — 

CHRIST. 

" The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the 
world." Well may this be the first note here : what 
other could take its place ? 

In the second pair of numbers we have the first 



86 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

two repeated, with the creature one prefixed. They 
are therefore a confirmatory testimony to the same 
truth, — not, of course, a mere repetition of it. The 
number 5 speaks, as we have seen, of — 

DIVINE GOVERNMENT, 

of those governmental ways of which Christ is still 
the key. And the number which is in relation to 
this here shows what is the end of it in blessing for 
us, in that glorious and eternal — 

VICTORY OVER EVIL 

of which the cross is the great pledge and prelude, 
and in which God manifests Himself, to the joy and 
worship of His creatures. Here the end is reached 
naturally of the first division. The second shows 

CHRIST 

Himself in the accomplishment of His work in 
behalf of men. Here it will seem to many, at first 
sight, that the result of His work would be better 
expressed in some other way than as — 

SANCTIFICATION, 

which they are accustomed to ascribe definitively to 
the Spirit. Scripture, however, is larger in its 
thought than this. Thus in Hebrews, for instance, 
we find sanctification by the blood of Christ, or 
"through the offering of the body of Jesus once for 
all," the blood " perfecting forever them that are 
sanctified." Thus we have "the heart sprinkled 



Tones and Undertones, 87 

from an evil conscience," and are enabled to draw 
near to God in " full assurance of faith. " 

Again, Christ is "made of God unto us sanctifica- 
tion," having "sanctified Himself" — set Himself 
apart in the place He has assumed for us in heaven 
— that we also might be "sanctified through the 
truth." Thus as an Object for our hearts in heaven 
He draws the hearts of His people from the earth, 
and gives them what is true power for holiness in 
"the joy of the Lord." 

Thirdly, He is also the giver of the Holy Spirit, 
who takes of the things that are Christ's to show 
them to us. Perhaps no one word, then, would 
convey the fullness of His work for us so well as 
that of "sanctification." 

But again, the number 6 recalls us to the thought 
of Him as — 

CONQUEROR. 

He is to come again, and to have all things put 
under His feet. By His blood He reconciles all 
things that are in heaven or on earth; and when He 
takes the throne at last, it is to subdue all to God. 
" Then cometh the end, when He shall have deliv- 
ered up the kingdom to God, even the Father ; 
when He shall have put down all rule, and all 
authority and power : for He must reign till He 
have put all enemies under His feet," And then 
what? Why,— 



88 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

PERFECTION AND REST. 

"And when all things shall be subdued under 
Him, then shall the Son Himself also be subject 
unto Him that put all things under Him, that God 
may be all in all." Here, therefore, the second 
series within the series comes to an end. 

The third begins with the number of the — 

HOLY SPIRIT, 

which, however, is connected with one which may 
at first seem to be little in place. It is the number 
which speaks of the — 

WEAKNESS OF THE CREATURE. 

We expect, rather, perhaps, something that speaks 
of strength or fruitfulness ; but here, indeed, when 
we are made thoroughly conscious of it, is the 
secret of both. The creature leaving its creature- 
place, seeking to be as God, fell into ruin. The 
way back is simply to take humbly, in true repent- 
ance toward God, the creature-place. "Out of 
of weakness" are we "made strong." Self-abased, 
we can be exalted. A whole book of Scripture 
gives us the story of a " perfect " man, who learns 
by most painful discipline, and now with his eyes 
seeing God, to "abhor himself, and repent in dust 
and ashes." Then, as in a moment, he is lifted up 
out of the dust, and blest. How simple is the 
lesson ! how strange the difficulty of learning it ! 
Once be but His creature, God will be your God : 



Tones and Undertones. 89 

to one with his body now dead is made the revela- 
tion of the almighty God, and to " walk before " 
Him is to "be perfect." 

Thus now we have the number which speaks of 
this ; the — 

PERFECT WORK 

of the Spirit in us being that, which, when all things 
are indeed subdued, ends, as we have seen, in the 

KINGDOM OF THE FATHER, 

where the subjects are all children, obedience but a 
deep delight, and the eternal day is sanctified in the 
Sabbath-rest of the children of God. 

Here, then, we have reached the end of these 
harmonic series, — as far, at least, as I am able to 
interpret them. Better theology I know not, — more 
concise simple teaching of it I have yet to find. 
Strange indeed it is, no doubt, to find it here ; but 
once again we are reminded of what has passed into 
a proverb, that "truth is stranger than fiction. ,, 
Strange as it is, though, there is nothing about it 
uncouth, fantastic, or bizarre. It is but a natural 
type read by Scripture ; and why should not Nature 
have her types thus, waiting Scripture-exposition ? 
Is there any thing much stranger in it than that the 
things that "happened unto Israel" should have 
"happened unto them for types " ? 

The real question lurking in our minds is, I doubt 
not, one akin to what was once plainly put by those 



go Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

who saw the box of ointment broken above their 
Master's head. It would be, "Cut bono ? " " To what 
purpose is this waste?" Why should theology be 
hid in music? and hid so securely that it should 
take nineteen centuries to bring it out? 

Well, if it be there, let us take the shame of not 
having found it : what has barred the way to our 
possession of these things, but little diligence to 
explore God's Word — little belief of what was there 
for us ? The knowledge needed to explore it is not 
very deep, — the skill to bring it out not any thing 
wonderful. No : we have simply never looked for 
it ; and "he that seeketh findeth." 

Well; but still, cut bono 2 Why should it not be 
enough to find theology in Scripture ? why should 
we think of it or find it in the laws of harmony ? 
Well, why should Israel's history teach us what we 
know without it? Perhaps, after all, because we 
would not thus know it so well. Perhaps because, 
if even man will not hear, God will accumulate His 
testimonies, and heaven and earth be made to wit- 
ness against him. Perhaps because His delight in 
Christ is such that He must everywhere express it. 
Perhaps to tell us where lies the soul of all true 
harmony, and that with Him alone are the pleasures 
which are at His right hand for evermore. 

For us now also it may testify that the "crystals" 
of theology will neither be "washed away" nor 



Tones and Undertones. 91 

" changed" by the inlet into it of the " flood " of 
science. This thought is only the result of the 
waters not being yet sufficiently settled to discern 
rightly what is going on. The sciences, in the un- 
wisdom of their babyhood, may strive, no doubt, to 
extinguish the theologians ; but before they are 
half-grown, they will be sitting at their feet. At 
their Master's feet, at least, all Nature sits in the 
hush of worship. 



9 2 



w 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Kingdoms of Nature. 

"E have as yet, however, not entered upon the 
field of science proper. We are about to 
do so, and to inquire what help may be 
gained from Scripture for the detailed study of 
nature. In this numerical system, of which both 
Scripture and nature are immensely fuller than has 
been thought, we ought to find a wonderful help, if 
it be (as we have essayed to show,) the same system 
that pervades both. Of this too, all future applica- 
tions will be a continual test. Thus every real 
discovery will be verified as it is made, in complete 
accordance with the not unreasonable demand of 
Mr. Huxley. Nay, it may be justly doubted whether 
he can produce, for a large number of what he ac- 
cepts as scientific verities, any verification so com- 
plete. That it comes to him from Scripture ought 
not to prejudice it in his eyes ; nor can the refusal 
of it for this reason be justified in the least degree 
under the warrant of science. 

And out of how many sloughs is he saved at once 
who can accept Scripture as the interpreter of 



The Kingdoms of Nature. 93 

nature ! What light is poured in there where the 
mere naturalist has to own that there is none ; 
and how this heavenly ray irradiates all nature ! 
How grand a thing for the man of science to be 
able to stand at the beginning of things with God, 
and to see, if it be " through a glass darkly/' the 
birth of all that exists around us ! What a new and 
vast field of research opens before him in Scripture 
itself, so little explored in this way as it has been, 
even to the present time : a field in which induction 
is as fully in place as any where, and where micro- 
scope and telescope will open up new worlds, as in 
nature ! Standing, as I do, but at the threshold of 
all this, or given to enter but a little way, I dare 
predict to him who shall bring together, as in a 
stereoscopic picture, the two worlds of Science and 
of Scripture into the unity which they really have, 
that he shall achieve for himself a triumph and a 
joy beyond utterance. For me even to lisp but a 
few things is yet much; and I do it in the hope 
that others with better knowledge will utter them 
plainly. 

A general view of nature is in some sense the 
easiest to accomplish ; just because broad features 
are more easily read than minute ones. And my 
hope is in this chapter to look at the kingdoms of 
nature, and to define them, or rather to show how 
Scripture defines them ; a work which may seem 



94 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

quite superfluous. But it is important to begin at 
the beginning ; and if some have no need, we be- 
lieve there is need for many. 

Classification, if it be a true one, must be of the 
greatest importance in order to knowledge ; if false, 
it must be correspondingly injurious. As putting 
things in their place, and exhibiting their difference 
from, and their relation to, one another, a true and 
all-embracing classification would be indeed, what 
one has called it, "a summation of knowledge." 

Even in the large and general way in which alone 
we can speak of it here, it is important to know 
what is the truth. Where, for instance, shall we 
assign man his place ? 

"The question of questions for mankind," says Prof. 
Huxley, "the problem which underlies all others, and is 
more deeply interesting than any other, — is the ascertain- 
ment of the place which man occupies in nature and of his 
relation to the universe of things." 

There are in reality two questions here instead of 
one ; but the second answer he takes evidently, and 
with some reason, to be involved in the first. And 
this is shown in his conclusion: — 

"The structural differences between Man and the man- 
like Apes certainly justify our regarding him as constitu- 
ting a family apart from them; though inasmuch as he 
differs less from them than they do from other families of 
the same order, there can be no justification for placing 
him in a distinct order It is as if nature herself 



The Kingdoms of Nature. 95 

had foreseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman 
severity had provided that his intellect, by its very tri- 
umphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonish- 
ing the conqueror that he is but dust, 

"The facts, I believe, cannot be disputed ; and if so, the 
conclusion appears to me to be inevitable. 

"But if Man be separated by no greater structural bar- 
rier from the brutes than they are from one another — then 
it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation 
can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordi- 
nary animals have been produced, that process of causa- 
tion is amply sufficient to account for the origin of man." 

And, accordingly, evolution accounts for him. 
"Man's place in nature" is thus in the order 
Primates, sub-order, Anthropoidea, and family, An- 
thropidae, next above (and not very far off) the apes 
proper ; and this position of his means blood- 
relationship with the beasts that perish, and the 
extinction of every hope of immortality that cannot 
be shared with them. 

If the body be all, it is impossible to dissent from 
these conclusions. But although it be admitted that 
the body is not all, and that psychical phenomena, 
as sensation, affection, intelligence, are not the prod- 
ucts of organization merely, still it is in dispute as 
to the real difference in this respect between man 
and the beast. Even De Quatrefages, who claims 
on behalf of man (as he says, with continually grow- 
ing conviction) that he must be referred to a human 



96 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

kingdom, bases this entirely on the ground of his 
moral and religious faculties. On the other hand, 
many now see in this respect also no difference save 
of degree between them. It cannot but be of im- 
portance, then, to have the testimony of another 
witness, and to see what Scripture — and with what 
grounds in nature — affirms as to this. 

Let us recur once more to our numbers, then, and 
ask ourselves what is the number of nature, or, as 
Scripture usually prefers to speak, of creation. 
Here there is not a moment's doubt : the number 4, 
as we have already seen, is the number of the 
creature. 

We have, of course, no right to say, on this ac- 
count, that there are four kingdoms in nature, in- 
stead of three, as nearly all the world says. We 
have no right to predict in these matters, but only to 
interpret. Yet, if there were four, we should have 
a right to take it as a new witness of the harmony 
between nature and the Scripture numbers. 

Suppose, for a moment, there were four kingdoms; 
there could not be a doubt, of course, that to the 
Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral we must add the 
Human one. 

We should have, then, three organic kingdoms 
and one /^organic. 

But here at once we have another note of har- 
mony. For the Scripture 4 divides commonly into 



The Kingdoms of Nature. 97 

3 -f- 1, as we have seen, the numbers speaking of 
creation as manifesting the Creator. We are enti- 
tled to look further, then, with hope. 

The fourth must stand here for the Mineral 
kingdom : has it the characteristics of that number ? 
Assuredly, if weakness and passivity characterize 
this, it has these fully. The inertia of matter is a 
well-known attribute of it. And from matter, we 
call that which yields itself up to the hand that 
fashions it, "material." 

These are strange coincidences, if they be no 
more than that. But are they no more ? Let us 
us examine the organic kingdoms and the numbers 
attached, and see. 

These three organic kingdoms, then, may be seen 
as one, in that they are pervaded by the common 
principle of life, and answer to the number 3, in 
that they are organic. Life is the basis of individu- 
ality in nature, as is evident. Every living thing is 
a unity in such sense as a stone or a rock is not. 
The rock can be divided, and is not altered, except 
in size. The living unit may recover itself after 
division, indeed ; but if it cannot do this, dies : it 
cannot be indifferent to it, as the rock is. Thus the 
four kingdoms of nature clearly fall into two divi- 
sions — the living and the non-living, which, accord- 
ing to the meaning of numbers, stand as 1 and 2. 
The living, though three, are one. 



98 Spiritual Lazv in the Natural World. 

They are one also in that they are all organic. 
Yet this organization which characterizes them, 
while itself one in the harmony of its parts, is more 
than one in the fact that there are parts, — organs, — 
individual, though harmonious. Life implies ac- 
tivity, and in this way a various activity, a division 
of labor for the good of the whole. And this we 
shall find really coming under the number 3, accord- 
ing to the definition already given of that number. 

Three is the number of sanctification ; and the 
idea in sanctification is that of setting apart in some 
special place or to some specific office. When the 
Lord says, "For their sakes I sanctify Myself" 
(Jno. xvii. 19), He is speaking of the place He is 
going to take as Man in heaven. So Jeremiah was 
sanctified to be the Lord's prophet, and Aaron and 
his sons to be His priests. All the vessels of the 
tabernacle and of the temple were thus set apart or 
sanctified to a special use in connection with the 
service of God. And here in nature, where all 
things serve Him, everything filling its place and 
doing its work, this specializing is but, so to speak, 
a natural sanctification. We shall find this thought 
in various modifications under this number, as we 
investigate the numerical series which are presented 
to us in nature. 

The three organic kingdoms thus far fill their 
place, then. But we have to go much further. We 



The Kingdoms of Nature. 99 

have to find the place of each one as tested by the 
numerals also : where, if the mineral kingdom 
stands as 4, the human, animal, and vegetable 
kingdoms stand as respectively 1, 2, 3. Let us 
begin once more at the lowest, the — 

VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 

How in this series does the number 3 specifically 
characterize the vegetable kingdom ? 

With regard to man and beast, the vegetable 
kingdom has an indispensable part to fulfill. Ulti- 
mately, it has to feed them both. For even the 
carnivorous animals are sustained by the herbivo- 
rous ; and did the beasts prey simply upon each 
other, there would soon be of necessity an end of 
all. But this place filled by the vegetable depends 
upon this, that it alone has the power of taking up 
and transforming the inorganic material into organic 
upon which alone the higher organisms can subsist. 
It is the price they pay for their elevation in the 
scale of being, that they must be more dependent ; 
and this is a constant law of nature. 

The vegetable is in this way the great transform- 
ing agency in creation, — the producer, as the animal 
is the consumer. Every naturalist in the world will 
agree to this .definition of it. And yet this, again, 
clearly lies within the compass of the number 3. 
The Spirit of God, whose number it is, is thus the 
Great Producer and the Great Transformer. Spe- 



ioo Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

cialization implies transformation. Sanctification, 
when an inward work, is the same thing. The 
water, the type of the Spirit, is that which prepares 
the root for the soil and the soil for the root : with- 
out its mediation, no food could be got from the 
barren ground. Thus the number of its rank in 
this series fully characterizes the plant in the or- 
ganic creation : its numerical stamp is completely 
justified. 

Let us pass to the — 

ANIMAL KINGDOM, 

still with our guide, and see how the more complex 
nature of the higher being will submit itself to the 
simplicity of this arithmetical law. 



101 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Animal and Human. 

THE vegetable has life ; and life is a mystery 
entirely beyond us. Nothing has demon- 
strated this better than all the labor that has 
been now for a good while bestowed upon it in the 
opposite interest. That it is known only to proceed 
from life is now admitted even by those whose 
every hope for their theory depends on the specula- 
tion that in another age of the world, somewhere, 
somewhen, it may have been different. In our 
present inquiry, we are happily delivered from the 
necessity of discussing such things. Scripture still 
leaves it a mystery, and we must : no less real on 
that account than the countless mysteries that 
everywhere surround us. 

When we pass from the vegetable to the animal 
world, however, it is not with life alone that we 
have to do, but with that which is much more 
strange to our partial systems of natural science, 
— the living soul. 

Here, indeed, theologians often themselves are in 
confusion, and have not given consistent testimony 



102 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

to the Scripture-doctrine. They have often made 
the possession of soul distinctive of man, or, con- 
founding soul and spirit, have ascribed the latter to 
the beast. They have thus lost, on the one hand or 
the other, the simple distinguishing marks of the 
organic kingdoms. According to Scripture, it is 
nevertheless as clear as need be, that in the vegeta- 
ble we have life without soul ; in the animal, life 
and soul ; and in man, life, soul, and spirit. 

Let us first get clearly hold of the Scripture doc- 
trine. 

In the first chapter of Genesis it will be noted 
that although we ordinarily speak of the six days of 
creation, the term is only used in it in relation to 
three things. First, "in the beginning God created 
the heaven and the earth." Secondly, on the fifth 
day, " God created every living soul that moveth. 
Thirdly, on the sixth day, "God created man in His 
own image." 

Now, the meaning usually given to the word 
" created " has been questioned or denied ; but here 
throughout it seems in contrast with mere making, 
and strictly to apply to the bringing into being 
of something not developed out of any thing pre- 
existing. In the beginning, (if strictly that,) there 
was nothing pre-existing. The "living soul " was 
an entirely new existence, not a development out of 
matter or its forces. In man, there is spirit as well 



Animal and Human. 103 

as soul : hence again a new existence, and that in 
the image of God, 

Notice, that the living soul is in the thirtieth 
verse {margin) distinctly said to be 'in* " every 
thing that moveth on the earth; " and that while the 
functions of nutrition and reproduction are by 
physiologists styled "vegetative functions," the an- 
nimal ones are those of sensation and voluntary 
motion. Both are indicated in the " living soul 
that moveth," with perfect accuracy. 

The "soul" in Scripture* is the seat of the 
emotions, love, hate, pity, longing, lust, appetite, 
and of the life also of the body. It is the sensitive 
nature, including in man what we usually call the 
heart. If "knowledge" is also ascribed to it, we 
can readily understand this, speaking as we do also 
of knowledge of the heart : but the seat of true 
intellect is the spirit. 

And this in man it is that shows him to be in the 
image of God. This has by some been referred to 
his position as His representative on earth, the head 
over all in it ; but this is impossible as the true view, 
for in that case, he would not have been created in 
it. On the other hand, the parallel expression in 
the fifth chapter, where Adam is said to have begot- 
ten a son "after his image," may well explain the 



* Nephesh in the Old, psuche in the New Testament. In the passage 
above, and often in our common version, " creature." 



104 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

thought. We are thus "the offspring of God ;" as 
the apostle quotes to the Athenians. In man there 
are "spirit, soul, and body" (i Thess. v. 23), and 
God is the "Father of spirits" (Heb. xii. 9), Him- 
self " Spirit." How clear this makes the statement 
in Genesis ! Had it said " Father of souls" it would 
have made Him Father of the beasts. 

So also is He the " God of the spirits of all flesh " 
(Num. xvi. 22), for the spirit is that alone by which 
we apprehend God, or (in that sense) have one. It 
is that by which we "know the things of a man" 
(1 Cor. ii. 11), and is rendered in our version in 
several passages " mind " or " understanding," which 
is plainly its true sense. To the beast it never is 
ascribed.* "All flesh" is commonly in Scripture 
limited to man : as where the Spirit is promised to 
be poured out on all flesh (Acts ii. 17), or all flesh is 
to see the salvation of God. (Luke iii. 6.) 

Thus by "spirit" man is in relationship to God, 
and thus also to eternity. If there are passages 
which may seem equivocal as to the soul, and the 
beasts that have soul are still "beasts that perish," 
(Ps. xlix. 20,) there is not in the Word of God a 
shadow upon the immortality of spirit from end 

*One passage only can with any plausibility be supposed to do this : 
Eccl. iii. 21. But it is merely the language of doubt from the stand- 
point of human knowledge : " who knoweth?" where ruach also may 
mean " breath " or " spirit," according to the context. See my " Facts 
and Theories as to a Future State," pp. 44-80, for the full argument as 
to Soul and Spirit. 



Animal and Human. 105 

to end. Nay, man who is in this life characterized 
as a " living soul/' (Gen. ii. 7) as soon as he departs 
is no more this, but is a "spirit." He still has a 
soul, as "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell" is 
proof ; but all the more striking is it that soul has 
ceased to define him : " they thought that they had 
seen a spirit ;" "a spirit hath not flesh and bones, 
as ye see Me have." Indeed, our own use of lan- 
guage recognizes the same distinctions ; for, while 
we speak commonly, without the least materialistic 
meaning, of souls perishing by flood or plague, we 
never think of spirits doing so ; and the departed 
man we still call a "ghost" or "spirit" — words 
equivalent in meaning. 

But why, then, this use of the word "soul "for 
man in this life? which we find, moreover, just 
where naturally we should expect something else. 
For, when in Genesis we have seen his very body 
moulded out of the dust with special care, and then 
the breath of life inbreathed by God as if He would 
endow him with something from Himself which 
should bring him into a relationship with Himself 
known by no other being upon earth, it does seem 
disappointing all our expectations, just to say, "And 
man became " — not a spirit or the offspring of God, 
but — "a living soul:" after all, only what the 
beast is ! 

Look deeper, and the disappointment passes, and 



106 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

gives place to other feelings. Scripture is only 
more accurate, more scientific, than we are prepared 
for. In exact classification every one knows that 
we have genus and species, and that we have them 
in this order and distinct. The generic must not be 
mixed with the specific definition, nor must the 
specific precede the generic ; otherwise we have 
real confusion, such as Scripture is never guilty of. 
In these two accounts of man's creation, in the first 
two chapters of Genesis, we have no confusion, and 
no meaningless repetition either. In the first, man's 
generic place is given, in contrast with the animals, 
where it is needed to distinguish him. Here it 
would not do to speak of him as a " living soul " — 
that would not distinguish. He is thus spoken of 
first as in the image of God, created in it, thus im- 
plying spirit, as we have seen. He belongs, then, 
to the genus " spirit," as do the angels, as do not the 
beasts : he belongs to the family of God. The 
second chapter does not repeat this : it gives his 
specific distinction in this spiritual genus. Here to 
define him as spirit would not distinguish him: no; 
his distinction here, as from the angels, is evidently 
just what is given us, — his specific distinction — that 
he is a " living soul." 

And what, then, does this imply? Is it not 
plainly that he is a spirit in disguise? linked with a 
lower nature, which, while suited to the animal 



Animal and Human. 107 

merely, to him becomes a yoke, a discipline, a hu- 
miliation, just because he is more? What helpless- 
ness is like the helplessness of a human babe ? 
How long does it take to put man in possession of 
those faculties in him that transcend the beast ! 
Nay, more, in those which but equal him with the 
beast he is painfully deficient. The beast's instincts 
fit it from the start for the sphere in which it is to 
move. In man, they drudge but in service to a 
higher nature, more dependent because it is higher 
— because in a world like this, built up from the 
bottom, as the first chapter of Genesis shows it, that 
which is higher is dependent upon all that is built up 
upon. Thus, as the soul leans upon the body, so the 
spirit upon the soul. The lowest faculties develop 
first, just because the others must by their means. 
The mind furnishes itself through the senses : the 
tangible, material things must supply the images of 
the unseen and spiritual : and of this, it is well 
known, the roots of all language are a perfect wit- 
ness to us. Man is a spirit, but a spirit in humilia- 
tion. "We see through a glass darkly" — "in a 
riddle/' as the last word means, — groping in the 
twilight before we see; learning by putting together 
fragments of knowledge, by induction and deduc- 
tion, by theorizing and verification, the painful labor 
of it all a constant lesson of lowliness, if we will 
learn it ; if not, a constant witness against our pride. 



108 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

And is not this the need of it, and the moral 
justification of it all ? If we will still listen to Scrip- 
ture, it was through pride that Satan fell, (i Tim. 
iii. 6.) Created after the angels' fall, by and by to 
be tempted in the same direction ("Ye shall be as 
God ") and to yield, these limitations and depen- 
dences are not a needless humiliation for man, but 
the true and tender discipline of the "Father of 
spirits," who, necessarily, and for our profit, chast- 
eneth every son whom He receiveth." Let us not 
fret under it, nor faint, nor be indifferent. Faith 
will turn it all to blessing; and faith here alone is 
reasonable; faith it is that finds verification from 
every whit of real knowledge. 

But this, then, in brief, is man ; and thus he is 
distinguished from the beast. His kingdom is that 
of spirit, while it is fully allowed that by one side 
he is related to the beast. Granting this, it is yet 
only a partial and materialistic classification that 
can assign him his place in nature with the beast. 
He is a true microcosm, in whom all the elements 
of the world in which he is are assimilated into a 
perfect unity, which sin has indeed obscured, but 
not destroyed. Life is indeed, as has been already 
said, the basis of organic unity. Yet in the plant, 
the individual organism can be divided again and 
again, and multiplied by division. So in the lowest 
animals, as notably in the Hydrae, we find soul itself 



Animal and Human. 109 

little jealous of a similar division. In the Zoophytes 
it is often hard to say what an individual really is ; 
and thus we may suspect even in the higher animals 
that it is more the complexity of the organism than 
the nature of the soul that resists division. But in 
man with spirit we find personality, a unity which 
appears in consciousness, and asserts sovereignty 
over all the lower nature. Here is at last a being 
who can say "I," and despite the constant change 
in his material frame, affirms his own continuous 
identity. Thus in his sphere, small though it may 
be, he is truly in the image of God, the unchange- 
able One, — His offspring. 

He is naturally also as a species one, although 
here some would fain have had it otherwise. In his 
triune nature, spirit, soul, and body, representing 
severally the three organic kingdoms, he of neces- 
sity conforms as they do, to the numerical law. 

But the animal kingdom requires further consider- 
ation. What does the number two indicate as to it? 
As we have already seen, that the soul is character- 
istic of the animal, it is in the soul that we must 
find, as it would seem, the number significant. It 
may not of course be confined to this, but at least 
here we should expect to find prominent the indica- 
tions of the number. How, then, does the number 
two characterize soul? 

We have here a subject little explored, and upon 



1 10 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

which we can find little direct help from science. 
But the researches, which have of late been many, 
into the difference between man and beast, indi- 
rectly throw much light upon it. 

Take the following from the Duke of Argyle : — 

"It is often said we can never really know what unrea- 
soning instinct is, because we can never enter into an 
animal mind, and see what is working there. Men are so 
apt to be arrogant in philosophy, that it seems almost 
wrong to deprecate even any semblance of the conscious- 
ness of ignorance. But it were much to be desired that 
the modesty of philosophers would come in the right 
place. I hold that we can know, and can almost 
thoroughly understand, the instincts of the lower ani- 
mals ; and this, for the best of all reasons, that we our- 
selves are animals, whatever more; — having, to a large 
extent, precisely the same instincts, with the additional 
power of looking down upon ourselves in this capacity 
from a higher elevation to which we can ascend at will. 
.... In contemplating the phenomena of reasoning and 
of conscious deliberation, it really seems as if it were 
impossible to sever it from the idea of a double person- 
ality. Tennyson's poem of the * Two Voices ' is no poetic 
exaggeration of the duality of which we are conscious 
when w r e attend to the mental operations of our own 
most complex nature. It is as if there were within us 
one Being always receptive of suggestions, and always 
responding in the form of impulse — and another Being 
capable of passing these suggestions in review before it, 
and of allowing or disallowing the impulses to which they 
give rise. There is a profound difference between crea- 



Animal and Human. 1 1 I 

tures in which one only of these voices speaks, and Man, 
whose ears are, as it were, open to them both. The 
things which we do in obedience to the lower and sim- 
pler voice are indeed many, various, and full of a true and 
wonderful significance. But the things which we do, and 
the affections which we cherish, in obedience to the higher 
voice, have a rank, a meaning, and a scope which is all 
their own. There is no indication in the lower animals of 
this double personality. There is no indication that they 
hear any voice but one ; and there is every indication that 
in obeying it the whole law of their being is perfectly ful- 
filled. This it is which gives such restfulness to Nature, 
whose abodes are indeed what Wordsworth calls them — 
1 Abodes where Self-disturbance hath no part.' " 

This impulsive, instinctive life is evidently what 
according to what we have seen, the mere soul-life 
of the beast is, — in a relation of dependence to a 
Mind whose will it expresses, but of which it is un- 
conscious, and which is not its own. Now, this is 
what the number two expresses, as has been already 
said ; and what makes them fit to be the servants of 
man, under whom they were originally placed, and 
who may be to them thus, in such measure as he 
practically fills the place allotted to him of God, the 
mind they lack. Abdicate the place too he may, 
and then those that should have been his servants 
only, become his enemies, and this is what, since 
the fall, we experience in varying measure, though 
still enough evidence remains of what originally 
God designed. 



H2 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

This is from one side what the beast is ; from an- 
other, he is the consumer of what the plant manu- 
factures, the balance-wheel against over-production: 
and this too is very fully accordant with his numeri- 
cal place. As the chemist puts it, he is the oxidizer, 
as the plant is the reducer, and between them the 
interplay of the vital forces is maintained. 

Even in his body — and so in man's, which is still 
animal, — there is found, as I think, the stamp of his 
number, in that bilaterality which everywhere seems 
(in contrast with the plant) the stamp of the animal. 
As Prof. Clark has said : — 

" All animals are double, even man .... bilaterality is 
the basis upon which the animal structure is erected; and 
whatever modification there may be in this feature, this 
type of form, such a modification is subordinate to the 



Thus it is not a feature of secondary importance 
that is marked by this number, but one of funda- 
mental importance. 

Has it to do with that voluntary movement which 
is part of the definition of the animal in the first 
chapter of Genesis, "the living soul that moveth" ? 
In the higher orders, as the Articulates and Verte- 
brates, one might easily imagine so, even the brain 
(which is double) being largely occupied with the 
control of movement, as Ferrier and others since 
have fully shown. This is but a suggestion, though 



Animal and Human. 113 

a reason for this peculiarity of structure there must 
be ; and this, if it could be shown, would complete 
the harmony in this respect between nature and 
Scripture. At any rate, the living soul fills its 
place. 



H4 

CHAPTER IX. 

Classification. 

TO touch the subject of classification even, one 
must be very bold, very ignorant, or — and I 
would rather have this considered to be my 
own case — very confident in his guide. It will be 
seen, in fact, that I have already touched it, and that 
my readers have some right to assert that the princi- 
ples that have been announced ought, if true, to carry 
one further. If nature have, to the extent affirmed 
already in these pages, a numerical structure, then 
is it at all likely that this should be but so partial a 
truth? Must not the smaller divisions, as well as 
the larger, if once they are ascertained, be char- 
acterized by these significant numbers ? Nay, would 
it not seem that their first service to us here, if, as 
is plain, they are meant to do us service, will be to 
verify true classification ? 

Certainly this seems a first necessity in order to 
find what deeper meaning than we have yet realized 
lies hid in nature. We must have some arrange- 
ment of the multifarious objects she presents to us 
which will save us the impossible toil of accumulat- 
ing in our minds the tens of thousands of points of 



Classification. 115 

detail, — of resemblance and of contrast, — which 
distract and bewilder us, if without a clue we at- 
tempt to penetrate what is yet, even to the most 
devoted students of it, so much a wilderness of 
facts and hypotheses. 

Classification, if it be a true one, is the putting 
things in their places, defining their relationship to 
one another and to the general plan ; and that plan 
— if there be one — must be God's plan, the expres- 
sion of the divine mind in nature, the lesson He has 
set for us to learn, however poorly or imperfectly 
we may in fact learn it. Classification is in this 
sense of transcendent importance ; and I trust, the 
thought of this may plead for me, if I offer but 
some scattered and feeble suggestions as to it, 
which, if they be little enlightening, may yet help 
another perhaps to find the light. 

Surely, the thing that becomes us, as those in 
our Father's image, is to expect to find every- 
where in what He has made the impress of its 
Maker, His own manifestation to the minds of 
those who seek Him in it. And (it may be again 
said) if He have forbidden to us idle words, there 
will be in all this no idle word. Serious, yet blessed 
meaning will face us everywhere ; and to look for 
this is to find it, if only we look reverently, as those 
that value what they search for. Here the law holds 
good, — "every one that seeketh findeth." Encour- 



1 1 6 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

aged thus by the Word of God itself, we may go on. 

Classifications are numerous enough, but in look- 
ing round among them one can find few indeed that 
claim for themselves any principle of construction 
which can give us the least hope of such a clue to 
the divine plan as we are seeking. The meaning 
that Darwinism seeks has no purpose in it, therefore 
no intelligence ; and the systems devised in this 
interest have as their only end, to discover the 
genealogical tree of life, which, whether it has its 
root in chance or necessity, was never watered by 
the river of God, and bears no fruit but Dead Sea 
apples. Nor in general has any divine plan been 
seriously thought of. There is, however, an excep- 
tion to this; and, if "he that seeketh findeth," we 
may hope to have here at least a beginning of 
truth. Strange to say, the first outline of it was 
struck out nearly at the same time by two men 
entirely apart from one another, the Wallace and 
Darwin, let us hope, of a better day beginning, and 
for which we would be glad to believe in the "sur- 
vival of the fittest." That its discoverers have 
passed away, and the system itself has, after awak- 
ening some attention for awhile, died also, need not 
forbid hope, for many a truth discovered has had 
ordained for it such a death, and yet in due time 
resurrection; and it may be so with this. 

The system has for us also this additional attrac- 



Classification. 117 

tion, that it is a nu??ierical one. Thus our hope 
brightens, especially as it purports to be not a 
hypothesis, but a discovery, — a report of what those 
versed in certain branches of natural history had 
observed in their respective departments ; not a 
theory of what should be there, but of what (accord- 
ing to their belief) was there. 

The first of these discoverers had given himself 
to the special study of insects, and the volume 
which contained his first rough sketches was called" 
Horce Entomologicoe. But Mr. McLeay's system was 
taken up, and in some sense remodeled, by a well- 
known man, and author of a book in which it was 
elaborated and applied especially to Ornithology — 
the "Fauna Boreali-Americana." From a later and 
smaller book, the " Geography and Classification of 
Animals," published in 1835, I take the outlines of 
the completed system. 

The first principle of Mr. McLeay's system is, 
that every natural series or group of animals is 
circular j — 

"So that, upon commencing at any given point, and 
thence tracing all the modifications of structure, we shall 
be imperceptibly led, after passing through numerous 
forms, again to the point from which we started." 

The second principle is, that the divisions of 
every group, where any exist, are five in number. 
To which Mr. Swainson adds, that the primary 



1 1 8 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

circular divisions of every natural group are three 
actually, and five apparently. He calls these three, 
the typical, subtypical, and aberrant groups ; and 
adds — 

"The difference of considering a natural group as 
divisible into three instead of tive, does not in the least 
affect the natural series by which they are united. The 
discovery of the union of Mr. McLeay's three aberrant 
groups into a circle of their own, is the addition only of a 
property superadded to that which they were known to 
possess ; this property consisting of uniting into a circle 
among themselves, as well as passing into the typical and 
subtypical groups." 

The third principle is this, — 

"That the contents of every circular group are sym- 
bolically or analogically represented by the contents of 
every other circle in the animal kingdom." 

And the fourth principle, which seems really in- 
volved in the last, although it was first stated ex- 
plicitly by Mr. Swainson, is — 

"That the primary divisions of every circular group 
are characterized by definite peculiarities of form, struc- 
ture, and economy; which, under diversified modifica- 
tions, may be traced throughout the animal kingdom; and 
are therefore to be regarded as the primary types of 
nature." 

This is the completed system, certainly remark- 
able for its simplicity and symmetry at any rate, 
while its requirements are sufficiently great to make 



Classification. 1 1 9 

it impossible, if they can be met in practice, for the 
system which can meet them to be other than the 
truth. We shall return to this directly. 

The second discoverer of this numerical system 
was Elias Fries, a distinguished botanist, who in his 
Systema Mycologicum applied it to — 

"The full investigation of the whole class of Fungi," 
says Mr. Swainson, "through all its minor groups or 
subdivisions." "It is very remarkable that this con- 
summate botanist, totally ignorant of the previous pub- 
lication of the Horce Entomologicce, should have detected 
the same principles of circular affinities therein devel- 
oped, and should have illustrated them by analysis much 
more fully. Yet, although these naturalists agree in con- 
sidering the cirenlarity of groups to be the first princi- 
ple of the natural system, they differ in the determinate 
number of their groups; those of Mr. McLeay being, in 
fact, ten (or, according to his subsequent belief, five) ; and 
those of M. Fries four. It seems, however, that the 
centrum or typical group of the German botanist, is always 
divisible into two series (sed centrum abit semper in duas 
series) ; and that each of his series or groups is a circle 
appears evident from the following words: — Omnis sectio 
naturalis circulum per se clausum exhibet, — that is, every 
section, series, or group forms of itself a circle. Hence 
it follows, that, as one of M. Fries's groups, according 
to his own account, is always divisible into two, thus 
their total number is not four, but five. The difference, 
therefore, between this theory and the last is rather 
nominal than real: for as M. Fries at the same time 
detected the theory" — principle? — "of representation, by 



120 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

which the contents of one circle typified the contents of 
a neighboring circle, this, of course, led him clearly to 
understand, and to define the difference between analogy 
and affinity." 

Thus two natural explorers, in different depart- 
ments of research, came to the discovery, as they 
believed, of a natural system, in itself sufficiently 
striking in its features, and much more so as inde- 
pendently developed. The distinguished naturalists 
to whom I have compared them had predecessors 
more or less in their own line. It does not appear 
that Messrs. McLeay and Fries had any help of this 
kind ; and their views seem certainly to claim, if 
only on this account, a careful examination. 

The system also, as I have said, is one which, 
taken in all its features, makes too many demands 
upon its followers, to carry without conquering the 
minds of practical observers ; and that it has been 
capable of being applied by those who were such to 
different and extended fields of natural research, 
argues for it much. It does not hide itself from ex- 
amination in the mists of geologic ages, or discount 
unlimited " drafts upon the bank of time," but ap- 
peals for examination in the light of nature as it is 
to-day, and expects its riches from existing bullion. 
We may take it up hopefully, especially as a numeri- 
cal system, and which as such we may test by what 
light we have got from numbers, — a test of a very 



Classification. 121 

strict kind, as must be evident. How will it be 
borne ? How will Scripture vindicate itself here 
again as the interpreter of nature? Shall we find it 
still a spiritual realm, and its law therefore spiritual 
law ? Let us see. 

We have, then, a quinary system which in a cer- 
tain aspect of it is also a ternary one. These num- 
bers, three and five, are very prevalent in the 
organic kingdoms. Among plants the flowers of 
exogens habitually have their parts in fives, those of 
endogens in threes or multiples of three. In the 
animal kingdom, the typical foot of the vertebrate 
is divided into five, as the joints of the digits are 
typically three. Three we have seen to be the 
number of the organic kingdoms, and that which 
seems to stamp them as organic. Moreover, this 
specializing of parts which is meant by organization 
implies also the unity of that for which each part 
exists : the three readily connects with one, as we 
know, and one writer has spoken of it as the num- 
ber of " constitutional completeness/' It is thus a 
number well fitted to be used in the arrangement of 
those organisms which are also, as it were, the or- 
gans of the whole creation. 

Of the number five in this connection it is more 
difficult to speak. The meanings already ascribed 
to it suit only man, not the lower creatures, except 
it be that which from the human hand speaks of 



122 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

measured capacity — a not unsuitable meaning, how- 
ever, for do not these five types, in fact, measure 
the capacity of that to which they apply ? and may 
it not be that as the three speaks of constitution, 
the five speaks of function ? Thus would mammal, 
bird, fish, amphibian, reptile give us the full range 
of function — thus the practical meaning of the 
vertebrated animal. And good it is even to think 
whether it perhaps may have a meaning ! in this 
direction, if our thought be infantile, it is none the 
less a good thing to begin to think. 

But now we must remember that each of these 
divisions is a circle, if natural; when we have 
reached our fifth point we are on our way back 
again to whence we started. Is it not strange, then, 
that in this number five, as already looked at in an 
entirely different interest, we have found a four and 
one — the four of the creature and the one of God 
— actually met together ! Thus, having started with 
one, we get back to one again : there is a closing of 
the circle therefore ! and with blessed intimation of 
a meaning full of the inspiration of hope ! 

For why have our naturalists had to give up that 
thought of a linear series in nature, which even 
now, in a mere involuntary retention of it in the 
mind, spoils the great mass of systems? Why but 
because that linear series is either something in 
which we drop ever down without recovery away 



Classification. 123 

from God ; or, it may be, ascend, but not toward 
God, aud so in result never to reach Him? This is 
atheistic Darwinism in its real character, or, on the 
other hand, mere natural godlessness, which allows 
things to have come from Him, but will not have 
them return to Him. This quinary circle, read in 
the light of its number, reader — a number which, 
remember, neither of its discoverers knew as having 
meaning, — tells us that nature is a circle that begins 
with God and returns to Him again : it is a planet 
that has its orbit from Him, and more ; its function 
and work are to bring us His message, and lead us 
back to Him again. 

Thus the system stands the numerical test well, 
so far; does it not? Not only so, but the numbers 
seem ready to bring out of it a wealth of meaning, 
beyond what we could have imagined. We have 
only begun, however; and have now to examine, 
with Mr. Swainson's aid, these primary types of 
nature, and see what more the interpretation of the 
numerical system may add to this. 

He says, — 

"As every natural group is first divided into three cir- 
cles, so it follows that there are three primary denomina- 
tions of groups ; and these, as we have already explained, 
are called the typical, the subtypical, and the aberrant: 
by these names we express their denomination, and we 
shall now treat of each in detail. 

"The first distinction of typical groups is implied by 



1 24 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

the name they bear. The animals they contain are the 
most perfectly organized, — that is to say, are endowed 
with the greatest number of perfections, and capable of 
performing to the greatest extent, the functions which 
peculiarly characterize their respective circles. This is 
universal in all typical groups ; but there is a marked dif- 
ference between the types of a typical circle and the types 
of an aberrant one. In the first, we find a combination of 
properties concentrated, as it were, in a certain individual, 
without any one of these preponderating in a remarkable 
degree over the others ; whereas in the second, it is quite 
the reverse : in these last, one faculty is developed in the 
highest degree, as if to compensate for the total absence 
or very slight development of others. 

"Let us exemplify this proposition by familiar instances. 
The crow has been considered the pre-eminent type of all 
birds, it is also the type of a typical circle. It conse- 
quently unites in itself a greater number of properties 
than are to be found individually in any other genus of 
birds ; as if, in fact, it had taken from all the other orders 
a portion of their peculiar qualities, for the purpose of ex- 
hibiting in w r hat manner they could be combined. From 
the rapacious birds, this 'type of types,' as the crow has 
been justly called, takes the power of soaring in the air, 
and of seizing upon living birds, like the hawks, while its 
habit of devouring putrid substances, and picking out the 
eyes of young animals, is borrowed from the vultures. 
From the scansorial or climbing order, it takes the faculty 
of pecking the ground and discovering its food when hid- 
den from the eye, while the parrot family gives it its taste 
for vegetable food, and furnishes it with great cunning, 
sagacity, and powers of imitation, even to imitating the 



Classification. 125 

human voice. Next come the order of waders, who im- 
part their quota to the perfection of the crow by giving to 
it great powers of flight, and perfect facility in walking, 
such being among the chief attributes of the grallatorial 
order. Lastly, the aquatic birds contribute their portion 
by giving this terrestrial bird the power, not only of feed- 
ing upon fish, which are their peculiar food, but actually 
of occasionally catching them. In this wonderful manner 
do we find the crow partially invested with the united 
properties of all other birds, while in its own order,— that 
of the Insessores, or perchers, — it stands the pre-eminent 
type. Here, then, is an example of the characteristic 
properties of the type of a typical circle. 

"Let us look at the type of an aberrant circle. The 
woodpecker is of this description, for it is the permanent 
type of the climbing bird (Scansores) , which is an aberrant 
tribe. Here, instead of finding a combination of diversi- 
fied characters similar to those belonging to the crow, the 
whole structure becomes adapted for one particular pur- 
pose — that of climbing trees, and extracting from them 
the allotted food." 

I do not, for I need not, proceed with the long 
and interesting description that follows, of the way 
in which this is carried out. It is evident that in 
the last case unity is exemplified in the very one- 
sidedness, or narrowness, of the development. But 
on the other hand, it is not less, but more, shown to 
the reflecting mind in that balance of attributes 
which we find in the former one. Moral unity is 
shown in such a balance of moral attributes in which 



1 26 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

is no defect and no excess. The idea is better ap- 
preciated by our narrow minds when the idea is 
narrow. The woodpecker is the typical climber, 
but the crow, the typical bird. 

Unity of idea, whether the idea be full or narrow, 
is, then, the characteristic of the typical form. Mr. 
Swainson has not the least suspicion of any mean- 
ing in numbers ; yet he has here given the thought 
as correctly as if he were writing with full knowl- 
edge. And he adds, — 

"Perfection in the number of species or of forms is also a 
remarkable and very general character of pre-eminently 
typical groups;" — 

illustrating, as usual, with examples. This is, in- 
deed, a consequence of that fullness of idea which 
is found in whatever is pre-eminently typical. In 
the crow, we have it exemplified in the species ; but 
it may be equally well in a genus, a family, or an 
order. And it is striking to find this as fully char- 
acteristic of the first books of Scripture. Thus 
Genesis, which heads the books of the Law, Isaiah, 
the first book of the Prophets, the Psalms, which in 
the Hebrew begin the poetical books, have fully this 
character ; and in the New Testament, Matthew, 
first of the Gospels, Romans of Paul's epistles, 
1 Peter (which, however, does not with us stand, as 
it should, at the head of the catholic ones), are plain 
examples in their respective sections. This may 



Classification. 1 2 7 

serve, with all else here, to show how thoroughly 
the hand of One Writer is to be found alike in the 
books of Nature and of Revelation. 

Now let us pass on to the subtypical groups, and 
listen again to Mr. Swainson : — 

"II. Subtypical groups, as the name implies, are a de- 
gree lower in organization than those last described, and 
thus exhibit an intermediate character between typical 
and aberrant divisions. They do not comprise the largest 
individuals in bulk, but always those which are the most 
powerfully armed, either for inflicting injury on their own 
class, for exciting terror, producing injury, or creating an- 
noyance to man. Their dispositions are often sanguinary ; 
since the forms most conspicuous among them live by 
rapine, and subsist on the blood of other animals. They 
are, in short, symbolically the types o/evil; and in such 
an extraordinary way is this principle modified in the 
smaller groups, that even among insects, where no other 
power is possessed but that of causing annoyance or tem- 
porary pain, we find in the subtypical order of the Annu- 
losa {Aptera, Linn.), the different races of scorpions, acari, 
spiders, and all those repulsive insects w T hose very aspect 
is forbidding, and whose bite or sting is often capable of 
inflicting serious bodily injury. If, again, we look to the 
subtypical groups of quadrupeds and birds, this principle 
of evil is developed in the highest degree ; both are armed 
with powerful talons, both live on slaughtered victims, 
and both are gloomy, unsocial, and untamable. The for- 
midable-toothed bill which so strikingly distinguishes ra- 
pacious birds, will be found in every group which represents 
them in the entire order of perchers, and these groups 



128 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

amount to more than one hundred. . . . Even in the 
smaller subtypical groups of larger circles, which are 
themselves typical, this extraordinary characteristic is 
manifested, though in a much smaller degree. Take, for 
instance, the American group of monkeys (Cebidce, Sw.) 
which belong to the typical order of Quaclrumanes ; of that 
circle it is the subtypical group, and we accordingly find 
that, while the family of true apes (Simiadce) live, in a 
state of nature, upon vegetable-diet alone, the Cebidce are 
partially carnivorous, and that many prowl about to de- 
stroy life by feeding upon insects, and even small birds." 

He gives much more to the same effect, but this 
is enough for our purpose; enough indeed to 
create astonishment if there be room for it, after all 
that we have had before us already. For how is it 
again that Mr. Swainson gives us one of the char- 
acters of the number two, strongly marked in Scrip- 
ture and in Nature, while he says and knows nothing 
of the meaning of the number which stands there 
side by side with the name of the groups of which 
he speaks ? It is now some years since, when study- 
ing the grouping of the Psalms, that I found to my 
surprise that commonly in a second series, whether 
of smaller divisions or of larger, and often in the 
second psalm of a very different group, the subject 
was in some way the enemy. It was not till a good 
while after, that I found the root of the meaning in 
nature, two speaking naturally of difference, hence 
of contrast, opposition, the enemy. And it was not till 



Classification. 129 

later still, that I found in Mr. Swainson's book this 
definition of his second subtypical groups. Is it, 
with all else that we have seen in the same way, 
accident merely that it should be so? Will those 
say it who know what the nature of chance is? 

But if not chance, what is it? Is it not, then, 
surely truth, and of God ? 

Second, not first, for evil is necessarily inferior to 
the good, — "a degree lower in organization than" 
the typical, says Mr. Swainson. A type of evil 
ordained for us out of the animal creation, he that 
will may find in Gen. iii. Is not this the secret of 
the strife in nature that goes on around us, that 
God would thus provide us with such object-lessons 
as are these ? Does not spiritual law govern the 
natural world still in all this ? 

No doubt there is much else in these subtypical 
groups, and, if we are to conclude from what we 
find in Scripture, this number will not always have 
an evil significance, but often the reverse. How- 
ever, we are just now following Mr. Swainson, and 
it will be better to let these things develop them- 
selves in practice than to give ourselves to what 
may be mistaken theorizing. Let us go on now to 
his third, or aberrant groups, which, however, as 
containing three distinct types, he can only in gen- 
eral characterize as aberrant, or departing from the 
the more typical forms. We might call them more 



130 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

appropriately, I think, specialized j and then at once 
shall find their number as a third group quite in 
harmony with their character. The nature of this 
specialization we shall learn as we take them up 
separately now. 

But these specialized groups stand in relation to 
the first two, as 3, 4, and 5, while they all come 
under number three of course also, as types more 
narrowly specialized than the first two. We have to 
inquire yet what they individually mean. This is 
literally true, while I write, that I am myself in- 
quiring with my reader, and propose to take him 
into my confidence, and think out my thoughts 
aloud, as I have been doing in much that is already 
written. There will be in it, thus, much of the 
charm of a voyage of discovery for us both : who 
knows what surprises may be in store for us, and 
with what argosies of treasure we may return to 
port ? Meanwhile, as we have taken Mr. Swainson 
for our pilot, at least as long as he shall give us sat- 
isfaction, we will go on with him. 

He says, — 

"It will therefore be necessary to consider aberrant 
groups as naturally divided into three distinct types. We 
shall, for the present, distinguish these by the names we 
have assigned to them in ornithology, — the only division 
of zoology wherein they have been accurately traced. It 
may be objected to this plan, that to designate a type of 



Classification. 131 

quadrupeds or of insects by the same term as that which 
is appropriated to birds will lead to a confusion of ideas. 
But on the other hand, as these types, throughout the 
animal kingdom, are found to present certain characters 
in common, the advantages of designating them by com- 
mon names are abundantly obvious. Hereafter, when the 
subject has undergone deeper investigation, we shall sug- 
gest more comprehensive and appropriate names. For 
the present, therefore, we shall term them the Aquatic, 
the Suctorial, and the Basorial : these collectively form 
the aberrant circle of every group in the animal kingdom. 

"The natatorial or aquatic types, represented by the 
natatorial order of birds, as the name implies, are more 
especially inhabitants of the waters. They possess many 
and striking peculiarities, modified indeed, in the most 
astonishing manner, but more conspicuous perhaps 
throughout all natural groups than any of those belong- 
ing to other types. We shall consider these characters 
under the heads of structure and economy, and exemplify 
our remarks by some familiar instances. 

"I. As to structure, aquatic types are chiefly remarkable 
for their enormous bulk, the disproportionate size of their 
head, and the absence or very slight development of the 
feet. If we look to the primary divisions of the verte- 
bratecl animals, we see one of those peculiarities very 
strongly marked in the fishes, the only class wherein the 
feet, in all individuals, are entirely wanting, while every 
one is aware that no fish can exist unless in its own ele- 
ment As we approach the more perfect animals, 

we begin to see the development of another singular feat- 
ure ; namely, a very large, thick, and obtuse head, fur- 
nished with jaws capable of great expansion, and termin- 



132 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

ated by a blunt or truncated muzzle or snout. This 
structure implies the peculiar power of seizing their food 
by the mouth alone, without the assistance of feet or 
claws ; and as this power would only be necessary to such 
animals as lived upon others, we according find that 
nearly all natatorial types are carnivorous Sub- 
typical forms, as we have already seen, are pre-eminently 
carnivorous, but they differ from the natatorial (which 
always follow them) in this, that the food is captured by 
the aid of the claws, whereas in the types we are now 
speaking of the mouth alone is the instrument of capture. 

"II. As to the economy of the aquatic types, we have 
already premised that they are almost entirely carnivo- 
rous — a habit which is naturally to be expected in any 
group which joined, or immediately blended into, the sub- 
typical. We have seen that the feet are slightly and often 
not at all developed : an incapacity for quick motion is the 
natural result of such an organization. ..." 

I have omitted Mr. Swainson's illustrations, be- 
cause they are not at present of any service to us, 
though we may more or less have need of them at a 
future time. All we want at present is the typical 
idea which we are then to proceed to test by the 
meaning of the numbers. The number is 3, which 
easily may here indicate specialization or transform- 
ation, as it is in outward form indeed carried out 
in these forms to the extreme. Three is also the 
number of solidity, which in popular phrase is ap- 
plied to bulk ; but this is much more doubtful in 



Classification. 133 

application. To a strictly natatorial type the num- 
ber would not point, nor perhaps any number, and 
when Mr. Swainson reckons as of this type the owl 
and the ostrich, it is plain that he cannot mean to 
insist upon the absolute accuracy of the designation. 
He can only mean that in the aquatic tribes we have 
in general the best exemplification of the type. Of 
carnivorous habits also the numbers say nothing. 

What we might infer from the numerical stamp 
would seem to be that we are at the furthest 
extreme from the typical, as it fact we are nearly at 
the opposite point of the circle, — the most trans- 
formed or in disguise : for the three is doubly 
stamped upon it by its position in the quinary series 
and its position also as a member of the aberrant 
circle. 

It is clear that either Mr. Swainson's definition 
somewhat fails here, or the power to apply the 
numbers, or else the numbers do not apply. There 
is a faint resemblance, but not at all what we have 
found before, or what we had felt encouraged to 
expect. On the other hand there is no positive dis- 
agreement either, and the clue to a fuller agreement 
may be found as we go on to the fourth type with 
our guide. 

"We are now to consider the suctorial type of form: 
this corresponds with the tenuirostral type among perch- 
ing birds, the grallatorial among the orders of that class, 



1 34 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

the gliriform among quadrupeds, and the onUciform and 
vermiform in the class of insects. We shall, however, 
designate all these order under the common name of suc- 
torial, because it is more generally applicable to the habits 
of the animals here alluded to than any other. One of the 
chief peculiarities of this type is, that the food is imbibed 
by suction ; a mode of nourishment which is of course ac- 
companied by many remarkable deviations from the struc- 
ture of other types. These are always the smallest in 
point of size, the most feeble and defenseless in structure, 
and the most defective in the organs of mastication. In 
all these characters the suctorial stands in direct opposi- 
tion to the natatorial type. In such as belong to the 
vertebrated circle, the feet are always fully developed ; 
for these animals are peculiarly active, and enjoy in a re- 
markable degree the power of leaping and running: The 
suctorial form is also widely different from the natatorial 
in other respects ; there is a great length or attenuation 
of the body, the head is always very small, generally pro- 
longed into a pointed snout, and the mouth as adapted for 
sucking is uncommonly small: in some few instances it is 
not, in fact, apparent. All animals belonging to this type 
are shy, and evince little or no propensity to become 
domesticated. They are without offensive protection; 
but nature, as if to screen them from their enemies, has 
endowed them with great caution, uncommon vitality, and 
in many cases has protected them either with a hard skin, 
or a coating of bony armor which entirely envelops their 
body, and repels all injury.' ' 

Here it is evident that there is again a corre- 
spondence between the type and its numerical 



Classification. 1 3 5 

stamp. " Weakness " is undoubtedly one of the most 
fundamental meanings of the number 4, as it is 
the fundamental thought in the type here. And if 
to this we add that it is the number of the mineral 
kingdom, this might well remind us of the many of 
these to whom it has been given, as to coral for in- 
stance, to provide for itself and in its own structure, 
the strength of the rock as their defense. The suc- 
torial element in the type we can scarcely expect to 
find indicated in the number ; but on the whole 
there is a clear and unforced correspondence be- 
tween this and the type. 

Only one more remains to be considered: — 

"The rasorial type, so termed in ornithology, is the 
third and last which enters into the aberrant circle — which 
circle is always closed by the union of this type with the 
natatorial; hence it follows that they approximate in 
their general characters. First, as to the form and struc- 
ture of rasorial types. They are, in general, remarkable 
for their size ; being inferior only to the natatorial. From 
these they are further to be distinguished by the strength 
and perfection of their feet; the toes of which (in verte- 
brated animals) are never united so as to be used for 
swimming. This perfection, however, is of a very pecu- 
liar kind ; since it is confined to the powers of walking on 
dry land, or of climbing among trees. These scansorial 
powers, in fact, although occasionally found in other 
types, are so very frequent and remarkable in this, that it 
may be considered one of the pecularities of the rasorial 
structure. This is the type so remarkable for the greatest 



136 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

development of tail ; and for those appendages, for orna- 
ment or defense, which decorate the head. .... But it 
seldom happens that both these peculiarities are united in 

the same group The food, in conformity to their 

dispositions, is almost always vegetable This is 

again, one of the strong points of opposition between this 
and the [natatorial] type. 

"But what more especially distinguishes the type we 
are now describing is the superior degree of intelligence 
and docility that runs through all the groups of verte- 
brated animals belonging to it. It seems to have been 
ordained by Almighty Wisdom, that there should be one 
type above all others whose powers were to be more 
especially devoted to man, and which should evince an 
aptitude and a disposition to submit to his dominion, far 
above all other created things. This is the grand char- 
acteristic of all rasorial types among the more perfectly 
formed vertebrated animals, whose size or structure are 
in any way adapted to answer the end proposed. This 
principle of nature was partially perceived by Linnaeus ; 
an analogy, indeed, so apparent to the commonest ob- 
server, that we can only feel surprise at its ever having 
been questioned by any one, much more by those who are 

naturalists All our quadrupeds of burden or of 

food are taken from the Ungidata. The horse, the ox, the 
sheep, and the goat are in our meadows and pastures; 
while the dog is a rasorial type of the Ferce." 

I have quoted so much that we might have the 
characters of this type fairly before us. At first 
sight, it would look as if they could be of no service, 
as we have already confessed as to this number, 5, 



Classification. 137 

how little the thoughts that come under it seem to 
apply to the lower creation. But it is one of the 
many encouragements that we have been finding all 
the way through the present examination, that the 
numbers not only interpret, but also receive inter- 
pretation from nature ; and so it is in this case. 
The number five as applied to man, speaks of man 
with God, the 4 of the creature being added to the 
1 of the Creator ; and we have brought this forward 
already to show that with 5 the circle closes there- 
fore. But in the lower sphere in which we now are 
— penetrated everywhere as it is however with 
divine meaning — the 1 represents man, instead of 
God, but man as His vicegerent and in His image. 
Thus this last character of the rasorial type, as de- 
scribed by Mr. Swainson, the " aptitude and dispo- 
sition " of those exemplifying it "to submit to his 
dominion," is surely as remarkable as unexpected 
an illustration of the number before us. Man with 
God means man subject to Him, under His 
dominion : here we have the shadow of that in the 
lower creatures. 

And thus, may we not say, at the end of the 
survey of the creature, we are reminded by these 
examples that they are put into man's hand to be 
his servants, — a good and needed admonition of the 
hand that bestows all, and to take reverently His 
gifts — gifts, but thus trusts, even as this number 5 is 



138 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

the number which speaks also of our own responsi- 
bility, and of the account we have to render to Him 
who has bestowed the gift. 



139 



CHAPTER X. 

Among the Creatures. 

PERHAPS, for my own credit, I ought to stop 
here. Perhaps even for the cause I hope to 
serve — which is very much to lead others to appre- 
ciate more God's gift to us of the creatures, and 
the full purpose of this gift of God, — I might better 
stop, content with what awakening of desire I may 
hope to have achieved, than go further to show how 
small the distance I have traveled in these inviting 
fields. I confess that with me that impulsive self 
of which the Duke of Argyll has spoken to us, may 
be refusing the voice of that calm higher wisdom 
which ought to be rather heard, when I attempt to 
face the difficulties of the practical application of 
such principles as we have been considering, and 
lead my reader face to face with Nature. 

Let it be conceded that we have obtained some 
real glimpse of the divine side in her, — heard a 
Voice from its very familiarity strange from such a 
quarter, — a Voice yet which sounds as a voice of 



140 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

home wherever we hear it, — have got principles, too, 
which have not only stood wonderfully the tests to 
which we have been putting them, — granting all 
which must be in fairness granted, yet we seem 
little furnished, after all, for what evidently now lies 
before us. These types of nature, though real, are 
yet but very slightly sketched ; their inner meaning, 
for which, Spiritual Law would say, they must above 
all exist, is yet more a hint than a revelation ; other 
principles, yet unknown, may (and very likely will) 
come in, to modify the application of those we have 
in measure learned.* All this is true, and yet we 
must go forward. " Every one that seeketh findeth " 
is a motto we may still take for our encouragement. 
And have we not, in fact, found much while on the 
road? It may be that our Father's book of Nature, 
like His other book of Grace, requires less the 
learning of the sage to read it than the teachable 
spirit of the little child. 

One of the first places in which we find our father 
Adam before the fall is among the creatures. "And 
out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast 
of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought 



* Thus it is to be remarked, that no one must suppose that we are 
giving hasty adhesion to the whole system of Messrs. M'Leay & Swain- 
son. We believe there is truth in it ; but that is very far from saying 
that it is the whole truth : we neither accept it wholly nor, on the other 
hand, condemn it for defects or mistakes, which adhere to all that is 
merely human. In the work and Word of God alone there are none. 



Among the Creatures. 141 

them unto Adam, to see " — that Adam might see — 
"what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam 
called every living creature, that was the name 
thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and 
to every fowl of the air, and to every beast of the 
field." 

So that one of man's first lessons was a lesson of 
zoology; for the giving names to all the creatures 
surely implies intelligence about them ; and the 
names stood for qualities in them that might be and 
were discerned. Adam was possessor of no language 
but his own, and could not hide in magniloquent 
Greek, as do our zoologists now, the emptiness of 
an unmeaning name. Could we recall, as we cannot 
now, those first names, we should surely find con- 
vincing proof that Adam was a full-grown man, and 
that nature appealed to him in a different way from 
that in which now it appeals to us, from our text- 
books of zoology. Indeed, the Hebrew names, 
which must be no very far-off kin to Adam's, may 
well contain plenty of treasure in this way awaiting 
the explorer. Since then, we have dissected the 
forms, and too much lost the life and power. 

However, we will not theorize : we will go abroad 
and breathe the fresh air of God's world, in which, 
let us remember, not a sparrow falls to the ground 
without Him, and He clothes the lilies of the field 
with a glory beyond Solomon's. Our interest in it 



142 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

may well be inspired by His interest, and that which 
we find of Him in it be in truth but fellowship with 
Him. 

Supposing still that what is written largest should 
be the plainest, and desiring to get, as the introduc- 
tion to all else, the general plan of creation, let us 
take up the animal kingdom briefly now, to study 
its divisions — of course, the largest ones. 

The types of which we have been speaking apply 
only to the divisions of the animal kingdom ; but 
the numerical system, as we have seen, goes beyond 
this, and characterizes all nature. We may take it 
at least as a fixed principle, that wherever the num- 
bers are, they are meant to speak to us ; they have 
a reason in the divine, and a reason open to be 
discovered by us to an extent practically unlimited, 
except by unbelief. Whatever is of reason is meant 
as an appeal to reason, God's written Word being 
always the interpreter of the obscure and parabolic 
utterances of the book of nature. This we shall 
find, the more firmly we grasp it, and the more 
faithfully we adhere to it, to be proportionately 
fruitful as a principle. I appeal to the reader if we 
have not found it so. 

The kingdoms of nature are not five, nor three, 
but four. The organic kingdoms are, however, 
three ; but they do not constitute a circle. On the 
other hand, their 3 and 1 speak, as we have seen, of 



Among the Creatures. 143 

the manifestation of the Creator in the creature, 
and justify our search into it that we may find Him 
in it. An unmeaning act would not be worthy of 
Him : we will not ascribe such to Him. 

Are there five types of form in the animal king- 
dom? To this, of course, there will be various 
answers. We do not propose to discuss them. The 
tendency now is away from the thought of original 
types at all. A mindless evolution, of course, would 
work in its own blind way : — 

"Experience has shown, " says Dawson, "that those 
naturalists who discard the idea of intelligent plan as 
embodied in nature, and who regard it as a mere chance 
product of conflicting forces and tendencies, necessarily 
arrive at irrational modes of classification." 

Cuvier divided animals into four main groups, 
basing this upon plan of structure. These divisions 
are those of Vertebrates, Articulates, Mollusks, and 
Radiates. Prof. Henry James Clark has, in his 
"Mind in Nature," elaborately argued for a fifth 
division, commonly conceded now, that of Protozoa; 
and it is this arrangement I propose to take up and 
examine in the light of what knowledge we have 
already gained. We will arrange them thus : — 
1. Vertebrata. 
5. Mollusca. 2. Articulata. 

4. Radiata. 3. Protozoa. 

If this be a circle, as we have been told it must 



144 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

be, to form a natural arrangement, we may begin to 
trace the circle at any point within it. We will 
begin, therefore, with the simplest because the 
lowest form, the Protozoan. 

" The type of this division,' ' says Prof. Clark, " is found 
in its relation to a spiral ; it is the oblique or spiral type." 

Of this he gives many examples, entering into 
details, as to which it would be, for our purpose, 
wholly useless to follow him. The simple fact is 
what interests us ; because the spiral type is (as 
revealed by the arrangement of the leaves and 
flowers) that of the vegetable kingdom, and the 
number (3) attached is that of the vegetable king- 
dom. In this, also, the lowest division among 
animals, are found the forms actually nearest to the 
plants, which, strangely as one might think, ap- 
proach the animal kingdom most nearly in their 
lowest forms. 

The forms here are mostly microscopic, and reveal 
their structure only to the skilled observer. It is 
no wonder, therefore, that this should be in debate ; 
nor is it possible for us here to take part in these 
discussions, even if we had (as we have not) com- 
petency for them. We must refer those who desire 
it to Prof. Clark's book. 

In their minute size, the Protozoa are certainly in 
contrast to Mr. Swainson's remarks on aquatic types, 
although they are aquatic. He puts them, indeed, 



Among the Creatures. 145 

in his fourth group accordingly, along with the 
zoophytes (corals, etc.); but this we shall have to 
look at when we come to these. As putting them 
in this third division, we have the facts simply of 
their being at the furthest remove from typical 
forms, of which there is no doubt, and their spiral 
structure, and other assimilation to vegetable forms. 
But of these lowly beings we know too little to be 
able to speak with much understanding. 

Still, even here, we may find facts of a most curi- 
ous interest, though through this relation to the 
vegetable rather than any proper insight into the 
nature of these animalcules. Can we find any 
" spiritual law " in a spiral type ? The leaf arrange- 
ment of the plant may suggest some answer, 
strangely connected as it seems with the courses 
of the stars ! But is it not all one universe, the work 
of One Hand ? Have we not been taught that one 
mysterious law links the fall of the apple with the 
courses of the stars? It is simple and familiar 
knowledge. 

Prof. Cooke shall give us, from his well-known 
book,* the law in question. 

"If we compare the periods of revolution [of the plan- 
ets] round the sun, expressed in days, we shall find an- 
other simple numerical relation, as shown by the following 
table : — 

* " Religion and Chemistry." (Revised edition, pp. 271-275.) 



146 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

LAW OF PERIODIC TIMES. 

PLANET. OBSERVED. THEORETICAL. FRACTIONS. 

Neptune 60,129 62,000 — 

Uranus 30,687 31,000... 4 

Saturn 10,759 10,333 \ 

Jupiter 4,333 4,133.; j 



Asteroids 1,200 to 2,000 1,550 f 

Mars 687 596 x 5 3 

Earth 365 366x3 ) 8 

Venus 225 227 2iJ ^ 

Mercury 88 87 H 

"It will be noticed that the period of Uranus is half 
that of Neptune, the period of Saturn a third that of 
Uranus, the period of Jupiter about two fifths that of 
Saturn, the period of the Asteroids about three eighths 
that of Jupiter, the period of Mars about five thirteenths 
that of the Asteroids, the period of Venus about eight 
twenty-firsts that of Mars, and the period of Mercury about 
thirteen thirty-fourths that of Venus. The successive 
fractions are very simply related to each other, as will at 
once appear on writing them in a series : — 

112 3 5 8 13 (L. 

2 J 3? 5? 8? 13? 21? 34? °° u 

"Notice that after the first two, each succeeding frac- 
tion is obtained by adding together the numerators of the 
two preceding fractions for a new numerator. From this 
series, however, the earth is excluded. Its time of revo- 
lution is almost exactly eight thirteenths of that of Mars, 
and that of Venus nearly thirteen twenty-firsts that of the 
earth; but although these fractions do not fall into the 
above series, they are members of a complementary series 
beginning — 

2? §? 5} ff 13? 21? ® C * 



Among the Creatures. 147 

"This simple relation was discovered by Prof . Peirce, 
and he has proposed an explanation for the anomaly pre- 
sented by the earth. But it is not important to dwell on 
this point. My only object has been to show that simple 
numerical relations appear in the planetary system, and 
this, as I trust, has been fully illustrated/ ' 

One moment, to indulge the theological fancy of 
a mind intoxicated, if you will, with reason. I have 
no spiritual understanding of the formula here, and 
can say nothing as to it ; but this exceptional rela- 
tion of the earth does seem as if it might be a note 
of — is certainly in strange accordance with — its 
exceptional relation spiritually to the other creatures 
of God, is it not? 

Then notice, — " for ye suffer fools gladly, seeing 
ye yourselves are wise," — that, after all, the earth is 
reduced to obedience to law : it is not left to be an 
anomaly among the planets, but brought back, may 
we not say ? And how ? By a new beginning and a 
new law, which none the less falls at last into harmony 
with the old order 1 1 Is it not what grace has at 
any rate actually done for us ? 

Further, look back a little. Behind Mars we find 
in the table that strange group of asteroids, which 
always has seemed to me, and I suppose to others, 
suggestive of catastrophe among the stars; they 
seem so like shattered fragments of a world that 
was. Here, in a general way, however, the order is 



148 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

maintained ; but among them, as we may say, not by 
them. You have to find an average among many 
divergences, as if law bound them only as reigning 
spite of opposition. Was there not indeed a break 
like this, before the earth left its orbit, when the 
angels rebelled ? 

And yet then there was no new beginning ! That 
began with— earth ? No ! but with a planet stand- 
ing in its right place in the former order of things, 
as Mars stands between the asteroids and the earth, 
while it begins the new one ! Blessed be God ! there 
is indeed One come into the ranks of the obedient, 
new head of blessing for a restored earth, with 
whom all begins again ! Reader, have you owned 
His name, and taken your place in the new order 
of things harmonious with the old ? Will you believe 
a gospel which the stars, in the light of the science 
of the day, preach so convincingly ? 

Well, we have wandered : we will return. Do 
you know that it was only Mr. Cooke's tables, and 
his exposition of them, that just now led me into 
what are new thoughts to me entirely, and the im- 
pulse to give them to you, reader, I have not cared 
to resist. If all else is full of it, must there not be 
a gospel also of the stars ? 

But to proceed with Prof. Cooke : — 

" Passing now to the vegetable kingdom, we find again 
the same numerical laws. The leaves of a plant are always 



Among the Creatures. 149 

arranged in spirals lound the stem. If we start from any 
one leaf, and count the number of leaves around the stalk, 
and the number of turns of the spiral until we come to a 
second leaf immediately over the first, we find that, for any 
given plant, as an apple-tree, for example, the number of 
leaves and the number of turns of the spiral are always 
absolutely the same. The simplest arrangement is where 
the coincidence occurs at the second leaf, after a single 
turn of the spiral ; and this may be expressed by the frac- 
tion 4, whose numerator denotes the number of turns of 
the spiral, and whose denominator the number of leaves. 
The next simplest arrangement is where the coincidence 
occurs at the third leaf, after a single turn of the spiral, 
and may be expressed by the fraction J. These two frac- 
tions express respectively the greatest and the smallest 
divergence between two successive leaves which has been 
observed. The angle between two successive leaves, 
therefore, is greater than 180° or half the circumference 
of the stem, or less than 120° or one third of the circum- 
ference. The arrangement next in simplicity is where the 
coincidence occurs at the fifth leaf, after two turns of the 
spiral, as is represented in the preceding figures. Other 
examples are given in the table which follows, and it will 
be seen that we have precisely the same series of fractions 
in the arrangement of leaves round the stem of a plant 
which appears in the periods of the planets. The fractions 
of this series are all gradual approximations to a mean 
fraction between 4 and £, which would give the most 
nearly uniform distribution possible to the leaves, and 
expose the greatest surface to the sun." 

Thus the Hand that has arranged the leaves of 



150 Spiritual Lazv in the Natural World. 

the plants has arranged also the courses of the 
planets. But the analogy is not seen at its fullest 
yet. For the orbits of the planets are said to be 
elliptic, while the line that would connect the leaves 
of a plant is spiral But if we take into account that 
the sun, with all its planets attending, is moving 
through space in an orbit, doubtless, of its own, (for 
every thing in the heavens is obedient to law,) then 
these elliptical orbits become, in fact, spiral paths, 
and the analogy between the vegetable and the 
planetary world is perfected. 

What is the spiritual meaning of the spiral, so 
interpreted ? In the planet, it is onward progress ; 
in the plant, upward ; — orbital, we may say, in each 
case, or obedient to the centre ; in the plant, a law 
of growth, of development, and production. How 
well fitted to this third place in which we find it in 
the Protozoan ! Here, indeed, in minute forms, as 
if to teach us lowliness as the accompaniment of 
this upward tendency. It is in our littleness we 
climb Godward, and, blessed be God ! it is in obe- 
dience, and as connected with our Centre also, that 
we do this. Sanctification for us is the ascending 
spiral : holiness is heavenliness. Can these lowest 
of creatures tell us this? 

However, we must defer the final answer till we 
have completed the zoologic circle. Until we find 
the connection, Mr. Swainson would tell us we can- 



Among the Creatures. 



I5i 



not put in its place any member of it. Let us go 
on to the — 

RADIATA. 

Here we find Mr. Swainson's third division, along 
with a part also of his fourth, under the name of 
Acrita, which includes the corals and other animals 
formerly called Zoophytes, as well as those of the 
last division. Prof. Clark, whose arrangement is 
followed here, preserves the old Cuvierian division, 
with the separation only of the Protozoa from them. 
The type of form is indicated by the name. 

" There is a regular 
disposition of parts 
around a common 
centre, as in the 
star-fish or the sea- 
anemone, which in 
the most character- 
istic forms are but 
repetitions of each 
other; and one or 
more of them may 
be removed with- 
out injury to the 
functions of the 
rest. In most of 
the Radiata, the 
parts so lost are 
replaced by a new growth ; and not unf requently it would 
appear that these parts may themselves reproduce the 
whole structure. " 




A TYPICAL RADIATE '. THREE POLYPES OF 
RED CORAL. 



152 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

In this last respect they show, it has been said, 
an affinity with the vegetable kingdom, as also in 
their circular symmetry, so that they have been 
sometimes called "the flowers of the animal king- 
dom," — nay, in old time, were mistaken often for 
flowers. 

As our fourth division, however, they stand op- 
posite the Mineral Kingdom, and radial symmetry 
is as well that of the crystal (as in the snow-flake,) 
as it is that of the plant. It is in this division also 
that we find the corals accumulating their masses 
of actual stone. This coral is an internal, not an 
external secretion, and forms the support as well as 
the retreat of the polype. The urchins and sea-stars 
crust themselves over with calcareous tests. The 
animal functions are almost at their lowest : sensa- 
tion and motion are alike torpid.* 

Thus their numerical place seems fully justified. 
The number 4 speaks of weakness and passiveness, 
for which the strength of the rock is their defense ; 
not only outwardly, as we have seen, but inwardly, 
— strength imbibed and experienced^ their own and 

* Here, indeed, there seems a contrast with the activity ascribed by 
Mr. Swainson to the " suctorial " type ; but it will be observed that he 
limits his remarks as to this to the Vertebrata. The number says 
nothing as to it 

It will be noted, on the other hand, that the capability of division 
which characterizes the Radiate is strictly according to their numerical 
place. Four is the first number that is capable of division. 

t In the urchins and sea-stars, external ; but they are not now con- 
sidered typical of the Radiata. 



Among the Creatures. 153 

yet not their own. Thus it is that the true experi- 
ence of the strength of the Rock — of divine strength 
— does not make something of us, but every thing 
of God. We remain what we ever were. " Confi- 
dence in the flesh " is broken, and all self-confidence 
is recognized as confidence in the flesh. 

Here we may encounter easily the reproach of 
torpidity and passiveness, such as we find in the 
Radiate. Sensation and motion may seem at a low 
ebb. In fact, the apprehension of God for us gives 
quietness and patience; and if " patience have her 
perfect work," we are " perfect and entire, wanting 
nothing." There ensues the stillness which is so 
little understood, and for which even the Marthas 
of their own kindred turn upon the Maries sitting 
at His feet, and rebuke them solemnly before the 
Lord. But it is not spiritlessness, nor carelessness, 
only the controlling power of His presence over the 
soul ; and He will justify it. 

Good will it be if we get fast hold of the lesson 
given us by these lowly creatures. If the sluggard 
may get his lesson from the ant, the restless heart 
may learn of the coral-blossom from the rock. God 
has filled nature with these pictures, preaching to 
the eye, though, alas ! having eyes, we see not. 

But we must go on. The fifth class, for Mr. 
Swainson and for ourselves, is now the Mollusk. 



154 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 
The— 



MOLLUSCA 




A TYPICAL MOLLUSK. 

plainly reach up toward the Vertebrata, and in 
character are intermediate between these and the 
Radiata. The repetition of parts and the radial 
symmetry are gone : the body of the Mollusk is 
" monomerous " — an indivisible unit. On the other 
hand, the sluggishness of movement in general 
remains, the animal functions being only somewhat 
more developed than in the last case. 

"The body of the Mollusca is almost entirely occupied 
by the organs of nutrition ; and the organs of sensation 
and locomotion are entirely subservient to the supply of 
these. We find in the lowest tribes of this group living 
beings which are fixed to one spot during all but the earli- 
est period of their lives, and which scarcely possess within 
themselves so much power of movement as that enjoyed 
by the individual polypes in a mass of coral ; and yet these 
exhibit a powerful and complex digestive apparatus, a 
regular circulation of blood, and an active respiration. 
But we nowhere find, throughout the whole animal king- 
dom, that the conformation of these organs governs the 



Among the Creatures. 155 

shape of the body; they rather adapt themselves to the 
type which predominates in its structure, and which is 
principally manifested in the disposition of the locomotive 
organs. Thus the stomach of the star-fish sends a pro- 
longation into each ray ; whilst in the Articulata, on the 
other hand, we find the digestive cavity prolonged into a 
tube, in accordance with the form which the body there 
possesses. 

"Thus we see that, in regard to external shape and 
arrangement, the apparatus of organic life has no definite 
plan of its own ; and in the Mollusca there is an absence 
of any general type to which it may be made conformable. 
Hence the shape of the body varies extremely in those 
classes in which it is entirely or principally composed of 
these organs, and no general character can be given which 
shall apply to all or even a large part of the animals com- 
posing them." (Carpenters Zoology.) 

In a large part of the sub-kingdom, while the 
body is thus, as one may say, shapeless, what gives 
them, for the mass, most of the interest they possess, 
is the often large and curiously made shell, on ac- 
count of which they are familiarly known as "shell- 
fish" The beauty of form and color which is lack- 
ing in the animal itself is bestowed upon the shell ; 
and yet for the animal itself, except as shelter, the 
shell is of small account apparently, and all this 
elaborate ornamentation seems thrown away. The 
shell, after the death of the animal, is all that re- 
mains to recognize it by, as the body (as conveyed 
by the name of the group) is entirely soft, and 



156 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

passes away, the shell, on the other hand, abiding 
quite untouched. 

Thus the 4 and 1 are easily recognizable in this 
sub-kingdom. The bodily weakness and the rock- 
shelter of the Radiate find place in the Mollusk, 
which rises yet into an indivisible unity quite oppo- 
site to what we find in the other, developing in the 
higher forms head-characters, and even an internal 
cartilaginous sheath for the nerve-centres, which 
assimilates these animals to the Vertebrata. 

But what about the numerical stamp in its inner 
meaning? — how holds the spiritual law again in 
regard to this number 5, which seems at first sight 
as if it would be so little capable of application to 
these lower creatures ? Let us see if we can under- 
stand it. 

The number 5 has, as we have seen, for its 
fundamental meaning the thought of man in his 
weakness in relation to the almighty God. We 
have seen it as the centre of all harmony for man 
to be here in his place, in creature-nothingness, but 
with God his God. Christ, in His name "Emman- 
uel," brings these two together, — is, for man, this 
God in relationship, his strength, his hiding-place. 
How beautifully does the feeble Mollusk in his 
shelter speak of that ! 

Not, however, as one might at first think, the 
lesson of the Radiate over again. The strength 



Among the Creatures. 157 

that is found in weakness there images a strength 
which is imbibed and internal. The rock that 
shelters there is yet within (in what is most typical). 
Only in the Mollusk is it really apart front, though 
in intimate companionship with, the being that it 
shelters. " Thou art my hiding-place," — " Thou 
hast been our dwelling-place," (Ps. xxxii. 7; xc. 1,) 
is only fully brought out in this type of form. 
Here, how true it is that the Mollusk hides itself in 
its shell ! not merely as its refuge, let us remember, 
but as giving all the glory to its place of refuge ! 
How exquisite, in this light, are the painting and 
sculpture of these beauteous shells ! For — let us 
remember again — it is the Mollusk that makes its 
shell ; and so do we, by our own receptivity of the 
divine revelation, (as the being we are considering, 
by its receptivity of light and air and food, the 
divine provision for it,) make, each for himself, the 
One we go with. 

Let us not wonder, then, at the great variety, and 
difference as to beauty, of these shells ; or that 
there are naked Mollusks also, wanderers from their 
type. Nature depicts for us, not merely what is 
normal, but the whole range of what exists. And 
with which of us is the God he goes with the all- 
glorious God He ought to be ? How blessed yet to 
be able, in our measure, to glorify Him ! Let the 
being that adorns its shell and not itself show us 



158 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

what is the sure sign of one who walks with God. 
And let the weak and perishable nature of the being 
that takes refuge in the shell, compared with the 
permanence and beauty of the shell itself, warn us 
how the glory of man shall perish, but the glory of 
the Lord abide forever ! 

We must not leave the Mollusk, however, before 
we have noted that that which is developed in it is, 
above all, the nutritive function. Digestion is every- 
where its strongest point, as we have seen : it is 
made up for this, if we may say so ; and this is of 
the very simplest application in relation to the 
spiritual idea which governs it — of which it is the 
expression. We must receive from Him to whom 
we give, for of His own alone do we give to Him. 
She who had the box of ointment for Christ's head 
is that Mary who had her place first at His feet; 
and if we are to imitate her in the last, we must ac- 
quire competence where she did. It is a good part 
which shall not be taken away, although the service 
to which it leads may be as little appreciated, even 
by disciples, as was hers. 

In the order in which we have been proceeding, 
the next group to be considered would be the Ver- 
tebrata ; but as this is the most comprehensive type 
of all, and needs to be compared with all the rest, 
we shall approach it now from the other side, and 
for this purpose take up first the — 



Among the Creatures. 

ARTICULATA. 



159 




A TYPICAL ARTICULATE. 

These constitute, for Mr. Swainson and ourselves, 
the second or subtypical group, — a most distinct 
and easily comprehended, as well as excessively 
numerous one. What with insects, Crustacea, and 



160 Spiritual Law in the Natttral World. 

worms, its numbers exceed that of all the other 
sub-kingdoms put together. According to the 
character ascribed by Mr. Swainson to the sub- 
typical groups, we shall be prepared to find it the 
most aggressive and destructive of all types ; but, 
as we have already hinted, we must not limit it, 
therefore, to what is significant of evil. Strife and 
destruction, though incident to an evil state, of 
course, are not necessarily therefore themselves evil: 
far from it. Christ came that He might " destroy 
the works of the devil," and "him that hath the 
power of death, — that is, the devil" himself. And 
we are all enlisted in this strife ; Christ's people 
are His soldiers, and must "war a good warfare," 
"fight the fight of faith," "contend earnestly," 
" wrestle with principalities and powers." And 
though "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal," 
yet are they " mighty through God, to the pulling 
down of strongholds." 

The number 2 is stamped upon the Articulata in 
the most perfect way. In them, bilaterality is most 
perfectly developed from the head to the extremity 
of the body, while the whole animal is divided into 
rings, which consist of an upper and an under arch, 
each of four pieces, arranged in pairs on each side 
of the middle line. Eight pieces give us thus the 
cube of 2. 

"The different rings or segments of the body always 



Among the Creatures. 161 

bear a strong resemblance to each other, and sometimes, 
as in the Julus [wire-worm] and the Scolopendra or Centi- 
pede, they seem like actual repetitions of each other. 
Each ring may bear two pairs of appendages, or mem- 
bers." (Carpenter.) 

" The tendency to repetition exhibited by the segments 
of the body is as remarkable in the disposition of the 
muscles and of the nervous system as it is in the arrange- 
ment of the general envelope. In most animals of this 
sub-kingdom, each ring in its complete state possesses a 
pair of nervous ganglia, united on the central line; and 
these ganglia are connected together by a double cord of 
communication which runs along the lower or ventral 
surface of the body. 

"The muscles, like the parts of the body themselves, 
are arranged with great regularity and exactness on the 
two sides of the median or central line ; so that the lateral 
symmetry of the Articulata is most exact. Where the 
segments and their appendages have a similar form and 
action, their muscles are but repetitions of each other." 

"The alimentary tube frequently passes straight along 
the central line, from one extremity of the body to the 
other, with a dilatation near its commencement, — the 
stomach ; and where this is not the case, the convolutions 
which the intestines make are usually few in number. 
Instead of a heart, we find a dorsal vessel — a long tube 
placed on the central line of the back, and divided into 
segments, corresponding with those of the body, — each 
segment being, as it were, the heart for its own division. 
The respiratory apparatus, too, is arranged with the most 
perfect symmetry." 

We have before suggested the connection of this 



1 62 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

bilateral symmetry with power of movement. Here, 
as necessarily among what are pre-efrrinently Na- 
ture's warriors, we find the greatest activity. 

"The development of the organs of nutrition in articu- 
lated animals would seem to be altogether subservient to 
that of the locomotive apparatus; — their function being 
chiefly to supply the nerves and muscles with the aliment 
necessary to sustain their vigor. The power of these 
muscles is so great, in proportion to their size, that, in 
energy and rapidity of movement, some of the articulated 
tribes surpass all other animals." 

When we remember the ants, the white ants, the 
bees, etc., we realize that social instincts also are 
developed in a striking manner among these, and in 
the ants find specialized warrior-forces acting like 
a trained host. A large proportion of the whole 
group, as the crabs, beetles, wire-worm, centipede, 
have their coats of mail also for defense. 

Thus the spiritual idea which reigns among the 
Articulata is not hard to trace. That it is in com- 
plete harmony with their numerical place needs also 
no insisting on. The general thought is all that we 
can here trace : for details, we have no room ; but 
there is here a fruitful field for any who will labor 
in it. 

We come now, lastly, to what is first in position 
among these types, — that of the — 

VERTEBRATA. 

The Vertebrata are, as every one knows, so called 



Among the Creatures. 163 

from their possession of a jointed column inclosing 
the spine, the skull being only an expansion of the 
same in order to protect the brain in like manner. 
Brain and spine, rather than the bony case which 
environs them, are really the distinctive characters 
of these highest of the Animal Kingdom. 





n c 

COMPARATIVE DIAGRAM OF YERTEBRATA (B) AND INVERTEBRATA (A). 

(a) Body-wall. (b) Alimentary Canal. (c) Circulatory System. 

(n) Sympathetic Nervous System; (n f ) Cerebro-Spinal Nervous System. 

11 In all Invertebrate animals, without exception," says 
Prof. Nicholson, "the body may be regarded as a single 
tube, inclosing all the viscera; and consequently, in this 
case, the nervous system is contained within the general 
cavity of the body, and is not in any way shut off from the 
alimentary canal. The transverse section, however, of the 
Vertebrate animal exhibits two tubes, one of which con- 
tains the great masses of the nervous system, — that is, the 
cerebro-spinal axis, or brain and spinal cord — whilst the 
other contains the alimentary canal and the chief circula- 
tory organs, together with certain portions of the nervous 
system known as the ' ganglionic' or l sympathetic' sys- 
tem. Leaving the cerebro-spinal centre out of sight for a 
moment, we see that the larger or visceral tube of the 



1 64 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

Vertebrate animal contains the digestive canal, the hoemal 
system, and the gangliated nervous system. Now this is 
exactly what is contained in the visceral cavity of any of 
the higher Invertebrate animals ; and it follows from this, 
as pointed out by Von Baer, that it is the sympathetic 
nervous system of Vertebrates which is truly comparable 
to, and homologous with, the nervous system of Inverte- 
brates. The cerebro-spinal nervous centres of the Verte- 
brata are to be regarded as something superadded, and 
not represented at all among the Invertebrata." 

It is clear that this additional part is that which 
governs the whole, moreover. Without being able 
to attribute to the brain the mental power ascribed 
to it by Dr. Carpenter, we may assuredly see in it a 
means of concentrating and combining the powers 
existing in those storehouses of nerve-force which 
we find in the ganglionic centres which make up 
the whole nerve-system of Invertebrates. And thus 
a unity of control is established over every part 
which we do not find in the latter, — a unity which 
is to be discerned in the fact that in the Vertebrates 
such divisions of the one animal into two, or even 
replacement of lost members, as we find in other 
sub-kingdoms, is no longer possible. The animal 
is here one, and indivisible, and that not by sim- 
plicity of organization, as in the Mollusk, but by 
subjection to one controlling power. Unity, from 
the full harmony of many organs and functions, — 
not the narrow unity of one prevalent idea, but 



Among the Creatures. 165 

that which we have seen to be characteristic of 
groups pre-eminently typical — distinguishes the 
Vertebrate. 

The spiritual idea is easily read here as harmoni- 
ous obedience, in which is expressed that integrity 
or oneness which is indeed the first principle of the 
life of faith, and which produces, where it is found, 
the highest development of every faculty of the 
soul. Thus in the Vertebrate now every function 
is elaborated as in no other type, — digestion and 
nutrition beyond the Mollusk, locomotion more 
perfect though not more various than the Articulate, 
the internal support without the immobility of the 
Radiate. In the circulatory system a true heart for 
the first time appears, and becomes a new centre of 
force in the body. Sensation is correspondingly 
awake, as the blood reddens, and the nerve-power 
manifests itself in a new energy and directness of 
application. How many pages could one write 
upon the spiritual meaning of all this ! and yet I 
shall not ; for my object is not to sermonize, but to 
bring my reader face to face with the God of nature 
for himself, when the application will be easy c 
These types are wonderfully full, detailed, and life- 
like pictures, needing little help to understand 
them, when once we are in a responsive attitude of 
soul. What wonder, when in them God has written, 
not for the philosophers, but the whole race of man, 



1 66 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

just as He has written His other book of revelation. 
Near enough to Nature's heart, we shall find that it 
is God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who is the Heart of Nature. 



\6j 



CHAPTER XL 
Life in its Lowest Circle. 

BRIEF as our glance has been, we must now 
leave the Animal Kingdom, to take up 
another volume of Nature's library, more 
ancient, and its language perhaps more difficult to 
read, and yet where diligence will assuredly find 
itself abundantly rewarded. The place of the 
Vegetable Kingdom has been as yet only just in- 
dicated. We must try now to realize a little what it 
presents to us in its primary divisions. 

But, first, what is the vegetable type itself as 
compared with the animal ? It would seem that if 
spiritual law reigns throughout nature, there should 
be some broad distinction between the two, which 
we could grasp as easily as we can those of the 
divisions; and it should be found that the classifi- 
cation of forms involves, where true, a classification 
of thoughts and spiritual principles also. A hard 
test this for the numerical system ! and yet if this 
can be shown to be the case, even tolerably, then 
its triumph is indeed assured. For such consistency 
as is implied in this would be as easy to imagine a 
chance effect as a child's box of letters fallen out 



1 68 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

upon the floor arranging themselves into intelligible 
sentences. Let us see, then, how far the thoughts 
we have connected with the divisions of the animal 
kingdom conform to this ideal, and what help they 
give us toward realizing the animal type as a whole. 

Here they are, then. We have, as to the spiritual 
principles implied, — 

i. The Vertebrata : " harmonious obedience." 

2. The Articulata : the soldier-" virtue." 

3. The Protozoa : " truth to the heavenly calling." 

4. TheRadiata: " strength in weakness." 

5. The Mollusca: " glorying in our hiding-place." 
Mr. Swainson would have told us that we have to 

prove the circularity of this group to prove its nat- 
uralness. As far as this is zoological, I think no 
naturalist would question it ;* but it is perfectly in 
order to demand that this should be shown as to the 
spiritual grouping as well as the other. Here also 
there is little difficulty, however, — for those, at least, 
whose minds are governed by the Word of God. 

1. Every thing must begin with the spirit of 
obedience ; nor can there be true progress where 
this is not, in purpose, at least, entire. Measured 
obedience Godward is not that : it is the assertion 
of one's own will where we please. With God, no 

* Except it might be the connection between the Amiulata and the 
Protozoa. But through the Rotifera and Hanarice this seems to be 
found with little difficulty. Details and arguments of this kind would 
hardly suit the popular character of these suggestions. 



Life in its Loivest Circle, 169 

command is arbitrary ; but wisdom, love, and holi- 
ness shine in all. Thus there can be no resistance 
but in pride and unbelief. 

2. And this is what characterizes the world of 
fallen men, in whom opposition to God is, alas ! 
open and organized. Clearly, if in such a world we 
would obey God, we must expect at once conflict. 
Thus the apostle enjoins as the first thing, if we 
have faith, that we "add to" it "virtue," — what in 
Greece or Rome was called that — the soldier-virtue, 
courage. After this come knowledge, temperance, 
patience, godliness, brotherly love ; but courage, — 
decision of heart that presses on through all oppo- 
sition — this is the prerequisite to all these things. 

The conflict is everywhere, and there can be no 
non-combatants. Neither God nor the world per- 
mits neutrality. That which is simply negative, or 
assumes to be so, is positive enough in evil : to be 
indifferent to Christ is to be against Him. Thus, 
that the second thing here is the plain issue of the 
first, we see at once. 

3. But that the third follows the second is not so 
evident. The connection is that which the apostle 
gives, that " no man that warreth entangleth himself 
with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him 
who hath chosen him to be a soldier." This is the 
spiral which is traced in the orbit of obedience, — 
the upward movement of the heart toward Him 



170 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

who is, though in heaven, the Captain of salvation, 
and by whom we are called with a heavenly call- 
ing. If our eyes are there, we shall be free from 
entanglement with the affairs of this life ; tempta- 
tion will not press upon us; our heads will be 
covered in the day of battle. Thus the third par- 
ticular is intimately joined with what goes before, 
as well as with what follows also. 

4. For with all this will go the sense of weakness, 
the conscious need of strength not one's own, the 
craving and the finding it as inward realization, 
though leaving one still to the conviction that it is 
not one's own. This is the coral type, which has 
its manifold and beauteous forms, as has its anti- 
type. Here association has also its recognized 
place, where those who are agreed are found to- 
gether, and "God sets the solitary in families," In 
all these things, how large a field opens up before 
us ! but we cannot enter upon it here. It is very 
plain how this unites with — 

5. The glorifying of Him in whom the soul has 
found its refuge and its hiding-place, and that in 
this way we return to that with which we set out, 
God's " statutes" being " songs in the house of our 
pilgrimage." Thus the life — not ends, for it never 
ends, but — completes its orbit, and returns afresh 
to begin its course with God in psalm. How beau- 
tiful here is the unending circle, the type of eternity! 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 171 

Can one conceive that all this is mere imag- 
ination ? Does not its very sweetness speak for 
its truth? 

This circle of animal life, then, how as a whole 
shall we define it ? what is the animal type, as told 
out in it? We have seen that "the living soul that 
moveth " is the Scripture definition ; we have seen 
that the number 2, which is that of the kingdom, 
speaks of service, as it does of conflict and even of 
destruction, on which account Mr. Swainson makes 
his subtypical groups, too exclusively by far, the 
types of evil, while, in truth, the work of Him who 
is above all the typical Servant is to destroy, but to 
destroy the works of the devil, and the lion, for ex- 
ample, is one type of Himself. Thus, putting all 
together, and in connection with what the circle of 
its primary groups declares, the animal kingdom 
seems to furnish us with the types of active life of 
the soul in a scene where service becomes necessa- 
rily conflict, and where hate is as necessary in its 
place as love, and is the fruit of it: "Ye that 
love the Lord, hate evil " is the motto of it. (Ps. 
xcvii. 10.) 

Only we must remember that, while this is the 
prevailing and characteristic thought, we shall find 
that, as the shadow accompanies the sun, so the 
types of evil are to be found in it also, as we have 
been reminded, and that numerously. For the 



172 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

world pictures for us the whole strife , betwixt good 
and evil, and only so could it present to us the 
conflict of good at all. 

We must also remember that there are many 
minor but necessary types that come in to fill out 
the picture, "aberrant" as well as truly "typical" 
forms having their necessary place in it, as we have 
seen. God's thoughts are not narrow, nor possess- 
ing the mere symmetry that we would often give 
them. While our thoughts of order are often like 
the close-clipped bushes of an antique garden, or 
the dead level of a Dutch landscape, He delights in 
the wild luxuriance of the forest, and the bold out- 
lines of the breezy hills. 

But it is time to come back to our question, What 
is the meaning of the vegetable type as a whole, 
when compared with the animal? And here it is 
plain at once that the vegetable, whatever else it 
may be, is not the type of external activity. Excep- 
tionally we may find among the animals (in their 
aberrant forms) a mollusk anchored for life to its 
dwelling-place, or even the coral-reefs of many 
generations ; but the law of the plant is that it is 
fixed: as another has said, its root is its fetter; 
although this be a thought which after all has its 
incongruity also. For the root is hand and mouth 
to it rather, by which it makes the soil in which it 
is rooted minister to its sustenance, and turns the 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 173 

dead inorganic dust into living forms of wondrous 
beauty and magic power. 

Yea, this root is the underground workshop of a 
life-force which is, as long as it abides, ever pushing 
out into the earth its mines, and manufacturing its 
products of many patterns and for many uses, 
which it perfects then in leaf and flower and fruit 
in its factories above-ground, where it clothes itself, 
in the assurance of the dignity of labor, in glorious 
apparel beyond Solomon's. Here, in this manufac- 
turing power, as we have seen, is the significance 
of the plant. In the life, which is its characteristic, 
having no higher qualities of soul as the beast has, 
it develops a marvelous power such as we never 
find again, by which it becomes the tender nurse 
and bounteous provider for all other life. It is the 
natural vitalizer and regenerator of the dead and 
lifeless ; typically this, and thus filling its place as 
the third kingdom, reflecting in its measure the 
operation of the third Person of the Godhead. 

Its activity is not external, like that of the animal, 
but internal, manifested in growth and production, 
processes of life alone ; which in the animal also 
are the necessary basis and support of the external 
activity. The world, like any other building, is not 
built down from the top, but upward from the bot- 
tom, — a fact which has crazed the evolutionists, — 
and thus that which is higher rests upon what is 



174 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

lower, and "much more that which is feeble is nec- 
essary," as the apostle teaches. Yet not in the way 
of evolution, but as here, where that which is higher 
is not produced by the lower, but roots itself in it, 
and transforins it. Life is never except from life : 
so, in opposition to theory, the facts teach. Yet the 
lower is necessary to the higher, but as a basis only: 
it does not rise to the higher level, but is raised. 
And this is the constant law. 

The vegetable kingdom, then, does not speak of 
outward, but of internal activity, — of growth and 
production, — of root and leaf and flower and fruit. 
Spiritually, this is easy to interpret. Here, the root 
is faith, — unseen, hidden, yet active, and the elabo- 
rator of all that is developed in the plant. Let us 
not be stumbled by the fact that the root is not 
always this : we have seen that in natural types the 
false is shown to us with the true, the evil with the 
good. There are roots which dangle in the air, 
flourished before men's eyes, but never reaching 
the earth at all : so is there a faith which is for 
show, not use, and useless, — "faith, if it have not 
work, is dead, being alone." These roots cannot 
alter the significance of the root, and this faith 
cannot take from the value of true faith. 

The leaf is, as is well known, the lungs of the 
plant, that in which the root-sap is elaborated 
by exposure to air and sun. It is that "confession 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 175 

of the mouth," of which Scripture makes much, 
in which that which faith has produced comes 
to light and air, and is ripened and invigor- 
ated. The leaf has a beauty of its own, and gives 
the tree its character before men also. There 
would be no fruit without leaf : let us not disparage 
the leaf ; though here again there may be the leaf 
which signifies nothing— /r<?fession, not ^^fession, 
— a parasite upon the plant instead of something 
integral. None the less is the leaf as the leaf a 
beautiful and significant thing. 

Then the flo.wer, what shall we say of it ? It is, 
most of all, what they say all is, and with a trans- 
cendent spiritual meaning which yet they generally 
miss, the reproduced sunshine, the face that greets 
you with welcome, the host with his honey-cup, the 
smile that anticipates the fruit in store for you. 
There are deceitful smiles, we know, and poisonous 
advances, and pleasures that intoxicate : and yet 
the flower — something spent of God in mere delight 
for you — may well speak of what is in store against 
the leaf-fall and the winter, and of the love that 
planted Eden once, and yet shall make the wilder- 
ness to blossom as the rose, — may be witness against 
mere utilitarianism, or that God has a use for pleas- 
ure also, and joys at His right hand for evermore. 

Lastly, the fruit : and the fruit is promise fulfilled; 
something of no utility to the tree, but a draft upon 



176 Spiritual Law in the Natural World, 

its resources, a sacrifice that it makes in order to 
minister to you : all true fruit is not for one's self, 
but for our Master, and we can easily distinguish 
between work and fruit. 

Here, then, are the elements of the plant-life. 
They show the character we have before ascribed 
to it : they speak of internal activity, the product 
and manifestation of the life itself, the sign of that 
strange regenerative power that belongs to it, and 
by which alone are sustained the external activities 
of service and of conflict. 

To come, then, to the divisions of the vegetable 
kingdom : botanists are coming to agree that there 
are five divisions ; three of which, too, are plainly 
united also among themselves in more than the fact 
that they are all cryptogamous, or flowerless, plants. 
The flowering plants have two main types of struc- 
ture — the dicotyledonous or exogenous, and the 
monocotyledonous or endogenous plants. We may 
arrange them thus, then : — 

1. Exogens : plants with a central woody axis, 

two seed-leaves, and the others netted- 
veined. 

2. Endogens : plants with a woody circumference, 

one seed-leaf, and the rest parallel-veined. 

3. Thallogens : growing from a thallus, in which 

root, stem, and leaves are fused into one 
general mass. 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 177 

4. Anogens : stem distinct from leaves, without 

vessels. 

5. Acrogens: stem vascular in part, growing 

from the top. 

Between these divisions and those of the animal 
kingdom there seems some real analogy, which, in 
his edition of Agassiz and Gould's " Outlines," Dr. 
Wright has pointed out. As he makes only three 
divisions of each, however, I can avail myself only 
partially of his remarks, especially as he puts the 
Mollusca, along with the Radiates, into his second 
division. The analogy, as far as I have been able 
to trace it, runs thus : — 

1. Between the Vertebrata and the Exogens it 
consists in this, that the latter — 

" grow by the addition of concentric layers or rings of 
wood made to their outer surface," the softer parts being 
thus outside, the solidity more " internally, like the osse- 
ous skeleton of the Vertebrata. The central pith is in- 
closed in a sheath, analogous to the spinal canal, extend- 
ing through the entire length of the plant." 

While— 

2. In the endogenous plants "the marrow or pith 
is interwoven with their vegetable fibres, as the nervous 
system is disseminated by ganglia through the bodies of 
the Invertebrata : there is no osseous skeleton in the one, 
nor is there any true wood in the other; but in both, the 
circumference is more solid than the centre. We see 
among some families of this section, (as the grasses, lilies, 



t 78 Spiritual Law in the Natural World, 

palms, etc., the same as among insects, Crustacea, and 
annelids,) the integument more or less indurated, and in 
some families containing a quantity of silicious particles. 
The knotty-jointed stems of many grasses represent the 
articulated body of worms, Crustacea, and myriapods. 
Many families in this division produce seed only once in 
their lives, like some worms and insects that cease to exist 
after having deposited their ova. None of these endoge- 
nous vegetables grow by layers, but by a swelling out of 
their internal structure, just as the horny or calcareous 
envelope of insects and Crustacea is periodically shed to 
allow of a general increase from within." 

Thus far I thankfully follow Dr. Wright, and it 
will be seen that the analogy shown under this 
second group is all with the Articulata. Although 
grouping the Mollusca with these, he traces no link 
of resemblance between the endogens and the 
former. Indeed, between the two animal groups 
themselves there is no special resemblance. 

3. I go on, therefore, to the Thallogens, where, 
among the Algae, there are so many forms that 
resemble animalcules, that there has been even a 
difficulty to decide whether they were vegetable or 
Protozoa. 

4. The Mosses are simple-tissued, stemmed, and 
social, so far like the corals. 

5. While the scalariform vessels of the Fern may 
answer to the development of the circulatory system 
in the Mollusk, beyond the other aberrant animal 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 179 

divisions. The fibrous cylinder of the tree-ferns, 
constituted of the bases of the fallen leaf-stalks, 
may remind one somewhat of the Mollusk's shell. 

Between the types of life so far apart as the 
animal and vegetable these analogies, though some- 
times faint, seem true. I certainly do not think 
that any thing like them could be shown between 
the divisions which do not correspond in the two 
lists ; and if this be so, it is strong proof that they 
are real. But let us now look at the divisions of 
the vegetable kingdom in their inner meaning, and 
as connected with the numerals severally attached. 

I. THE EXOGEN. 




EXOGENOUS WOOD. 

(A) Sapwood. (B) Heartwood. (C) Bark. 

The exogen is distinguished by the woody axis of 
its stem, its netted leaves, its two cotyledons : we 



1 80 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

will begin with that to which it owes its name — the 
stem. This, of course, is only to be seen in its full 
meaning in the tree, and all the trees of our tem- 
perate and colder climes are exogens. 

If we cut across the stem or branch of an exogen- 
ous tree, we shall find it composed of three parts 
essentially. There is, first, a central pith : this is 
the tissue of which the whole plant is at first com- 
posed, and from which all other is formed. It is 
composed of cells, the primary elements of all living 
things, in which is contained the " protoplasm," the 
substance in which alone life manifests itself, and of 
which the simplest living forms, whether plant or 
animal, seem wholly to consist. Cellular tissue is 
therefore the typical life-tissue, in which the activity 
characteristic of life manifests itself, the actual 
workshop in which the inorganic matter received 
into it becomes living, and then takes its place in the 
organism to fulfill its destined purpose in it. 

We do not wonder, then, to find this cellular tissue 
in the middle of the stem, connected with " rays," 
— the " medullary rays,"— which proceed from it to 
the outer portion. As the tree or branch gets older, 
the life-tissue diminishes and dries up in the heart, 
and the tree (alas ! as we do,) grows old fast in this 
way. Yet the medullary rays remain, and serve an 
important purpose, of which we shall presently have 
to speak. 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 181 

The pith is surrounded by the woody layers, the 
number and thickness of which increase yearly with 
the growth of the tree itself. These woody layers 
constitute, of course, the strength of the tree, by 
virtue of which it lifts its glorious foliage and its 
harvest of fruit into the light and air of heaven. In 
the exogen, these woody layers, the product of 
transformed living cells, are pressed close to the 
heart of the tree, as if it knew and clung to its sup- 
port. Would that we knew as well ! But at least 
we do know, for we have seen it already in the 
Radiate, what this axis of support represents. It is 
Christ with all that is revealed to us in Him, and as 
He is received by the soul in living reality, that is 
the stay and support of it. Well may He be clasped 
to our hearts, and become the prop upon which our 
whole life hangs, with all the weight it carries. 

Only observe, as you may in the herbaceous stem, 
how the woody layers form, namely, in strings: 
"each string separated from its neighbors by a 
prolongation of the pith, which thus maintains its 
connection with the bark." For the reception of 
Christ is by the Word, — the "doctrine of Christ," — 
and this must thus (every string or line of truth) be 
wrapped up — to speak according to the type, — in 
living tissue. Alas ! the accumulation of this woody 
fibre, all-valuable as it is, may choke up these life- 
channels, through which the sap penetrates through- 



1 82 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

out the stem of the tree, and sad injury be done. 
The medullary rays are to remain : all the truth of 
God must abide in connection with the life, and the 
life-pulses, as it were, ramify through it. 

But the woody layers must increase : year by 
year, a ring of wood is added to the central axis, 
the tree enlarging to make room for it: this is the 
way too for us to acquire truth without being 
choked up by it — the only way. And the tree, at 
least, never neglects to lay up its store. You may 
count its years of growth by these annual rings ! 
Thus too with us should the new truth apply itself 
to, wrap round, and strengthen what we possessed 
before ; and thus that which was first received 
becomes like the " heart-wood" — stronger and more 
solid continually. 

The bark is formed on the outside of the wood, 
but grows from the inside out, the outer layers grad- 
ually decaying, and dropping off. With every fresh 
life-burst in the spring, the bark is loosened from 
the wood by the newly organizing substance; so 
that the new wood clothes itself afresh with a coat 
to suit it. So should it be with our outward life: it 
should receive its expansion from within, and be 
always ready to receive expansion and new model- 
ing. These changes are incident to growth, and 
should not subject us to the charge of fickleness 
or inconstancy. The expansive power of life is a 



Life in its Lozvest Circle. 183 

mighty energy, and if it can be resisted, yet there 
is death in the resistance. 

The stem as the ascending axis of the plant is 
fittingly accompanied by that spiral arrangement of 
the leaves in which we have the type of orbital and 
upward progress. The leaf itself, it is assured us,* 
gives the pattern of the whole tree, supposing the 
branches were brought into one plane, as the veins 
of the leaf are. If the leaf speak of profession, then 
we are reminded here of the needful consistency 
between what we profess and what we are. In the 
reticulated veins of Exogens we have an arrange- 
ment by which the sap is more completely and per- 
sistently exposed to light and air than it is in the 
parallel veins of the Endogenous leaf. And this 
corresponds in measure to the more perfect oxygen- 
ation of the blood in the Vertebrata than in the 
other divisions of the animal kingdom. 

In that living and internal activity which we have 
seen the plant typifies, — that in which alone fruit is 
found, the Exogen has clearly the highest place. 
As already said, all the trees of temperate climes, 
and the largest number of all trees by far, belong 
to this division. It is the type of endurance, as it 
is of perpetuity, in its duration of life surpassing all 
other trees. As taking first rank among vegetables, 



* "Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation." By Drs. McCosh 
& Dickie, 



1 84 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

its numerical place speaks, as I think, of that har- 
monious, full-rounded life in which alone is power 
and perpetuity ; and the peculiarity of its growth 
assuredly should remind us that it is Christ in the 
heart, Lord and Master there, that communicates 
this power. For this, doctrine — dogma, if you 
please, — is absolutely needful : that is, the Word of 
God received in the love of it. We are sanctified 
by the truth, — not by what we think truth merely, 
nor by sincerity. We take form by it ; we are cast 
in the mould of the doctrine. That there is danger 
for us here we have already admitted, but the 
danger in the present day is comparatively little in 
the direction of adherence over-much to dogma ; 
it is much more that of careless indifference and 
unbelief. Let these concentric rings of animal 
growth in the Exogen be our admonition : for the 
life of the plant is shown in these new acquirements; 
here it is that the circulation of the vital sap is 
mainly carried on, which ceasing, the tree is dead. 

2. THE ENDOGEN. 

The Endogen has no proper woody axis : it is 
rather, in idea, a woody cylinder ; it is sometimes, 
as in the grasses, almost a hollow one. Its stem is 
a walled stem, a fortified inclosure, as if built 
against assault. In the trailing palms, and in the 
grasses, the stems are " additionally hardened by a 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 185 

copious deposition of silex ; this is especially the 
case in the Rattan, which will readily strike fire 
with steel." In the interior, the cellular tissue is 
mingled with bundles of woody fibres carrying 
vessels : there is no proper wood. The palms, in- 
deed, are the only real trees among the endogens ; 
and for value, they are far exceeded by the grasses, 
which to men and cattle furnish so large a propor- 
tion of their food. The biblical notices have to do 
almost entirely with these two, — the grasses and 
the palms. 




STEM OF A PALM \ ENDOGENOUS. 

The palm-tree is, in Scripture, the figure of the 
righteous, taking its name from that uprightness 
which furnishes so ready a similitude. 

"The familiar comparison, 'The righteous shall flourish 
like the palm-tree,' " says Dr. Howson, "suggests a 



1 86 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

world of illustration, whether respect be had to the 
orderly and regular aspect of the tree, its fruitfulness, the 
perpetual greenness of its foliage, or the height at which 
the foliage grows, — as far as possible from earth and as 
near as possible to heaven. Perhaps no point is more 
worthy of mention, if we wish to pursue the comparison, 
than the elasticity of the fibre of the palm, and its deter- 
mined growth upward, even when loaded with weights." 

To which Tristram adds that it flourishes in a 
barren soil ; being characteristic of sandy and semi- 
tropical deserts, but requires constant moisture, and 
has died out of much of Palestine from the lack of 
human care. 

The palms in the hands of those come out of 
great tribulation, therefore, in the book of Revela- 
tion, may well speak, not only of the desert out of 
which they have come, but no less of the divine love 
which had there tended and nurtured them ; for 
thus all human righteousness is dependent upon 
the grace of God and the " living water" of the 
Spirit of God. 

At the other extreme from the stately palm, the 
grasses render to man incomparable service. 

"When it is considered, " says Dr. Carpenter, "that all 
the wheat, barley, oats, rye, and other corn-grains used as 
food by man, — as also rice and maize, or Indian corn, 
which support an even larger number than the former, — 
the sugar, which is now become, not only an article of 
luxury to him, but of necessity, — and the various grasses, 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 187 

which form the staple food of nearly all the animals, upon 
which he relies for the supply of his appetite, and for 
assistance in his labors, — it will be at once seen that no 
single tribe can be compared with the Graminese in im- 
portance to him. We have had to notice other tribes, and 
even particular species, which are of the most important 
benefit in certain situations; such are the date and the 
cocoa-nut. But these are valuable just because the 
grasses, which are otherwise universal in their distribu- 
tiou, are prevented, by peculiarities of climate, or other 
causes, from flourishing in those particular spots. In all 
but the very coldest parts of Europe we find some of the 
corn-grains affording the principal supplies of food; — 
barley and oats in the north, rye in latitudes a little more 
southern, and then wheat. In the southern parts of Eu- 
rope, rice and maize come into ordinary cultivation; and 
the use of these extends throughout the tropics. 

"The various provisions for the natural propagation of 
these important vegetables are extremely interesting. 
The animals which browse upon them usually prefer the 
foliage, leaving the flowerstalks to ripen their seed; or, if 
they destroy both, the plant spreads by offsets from the 
underground stems. Even if they be trodden down, they 
are not destroyed ; for buds are developed from the 
several nodes of the stem, which thus multiply the plant. 
It is on exposed downs and barren places, where the heat 
is insufficient to ripen the seeds, and where there is no 
germination, that we find the tendency to multiply by buds 
most remarkable." 

Not only do the grasses minister thus directly to 
man, but they even preserve for him the fertility of 



1 88 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

the ground, and the ground itself. The Sand-Reed 
and other species — 

"Can vegetate amidst dry and drifting sand, and are 
hence employed to give firmness to embankments, which 
they pierce with an entangled web of living structure, that 
offers a resistance rarely overcome by the force of storms, 
and is renewed as fast as it is destroyed. Cattle will not eat 
them, and hence they are providentially adapted to escape 
that mode of destruction ; but when they have been up- 
rooted by the thoughtlessness or ignorance of man, the 
most serious evils have arisen. In Scotland, for example, 
large tracts of once fertile country have been rendered 
barren by the encroachment of sand hills, which have 
given them the desertlike aspect of Egyptian plains; and 
this encroachment has resulted from the wanton destruc- 
tion of the mat-grasses." 

Thus service has here also to take the form of 
conflict, and the service of the grass is largely of 
this character. 

"Indeed," says Macmillan, "the great primary object 
which God intended to serve by the universal diffusion of 
the grass, seems to be the protection of the soil. Were 
the soil freely exposed to heaven without any organic 
covering, it would speedily pass away from the rocks on 
whose surface it was deposited. The floods would lay 
bare one district, and encumber another with the accumu- 
lated heaps. The sun would dry it up, and deprive it of 
all its nourishing constituents; the winds would scatter 
it far and near, and fill the whole atmosphere with its 
blinding, choking clouds. It is impossible to imagine all 
the disastrous effects that would be produced over the 



Life in its Loivest Circle. 189 

whole earth, were the disintergration of the elements not 
counteracted by the conservative force of vital growth, and 
the destructive powers of nature not kept in check by the 
apparently insignificant, but actually irresistible emerald 
sceptre of the grass. The earth would soon be deprived 
of its vegetation and inhabitants, and become one vast 
desert catacomb, a gigantic lifeless cinder, revolving 
without aim or object round the sun." 

For its place in this conflict it is marvelously 
adapted. 

"The root, in proportion to its size, is more fibrous and 
tenacious than that of any other plant. In some instances 
it is so vital that, like Hercules hydra, the more it is hacked 
and cut, the faster it spreads itself ; and it runs so exten- 
sively, each joint sending up a new shoot, that it encloses 
a considerable space of soil. . . . The stem, or culm, is 
hollow, provided at intervals with knots, and invested, as 
if by some mysterious process of electrotype, with a thin 
coating of flint. It is constructed in this manner so as to 
combine the utmost strength with its light and elegant 
form; and so efficient are these mechanical appliances, 
that it rarely gives way under the force of the most 
violent winds." 

The endogenous growth in such opposite devel- 
opments, then, as the grasses and the palms, gives 
a true indication of the thought which is embodied 
in this division of the vegetable kingdom ; and the 
grasses refer us to the Articulata in more than 
their jointed stems. But while nutritive products 
abound among the endogens, there are few that are 



190 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

injurious: the " types of evil" of which Mr. Swain- 
son speaks, are found but seldom throughout this 
class. They are largely the benefactors and minis- 
ters to the need of man ; uniting with this the 
thought of separation from surrounding influences. 
The walled stem is, as it were, a "garden inclosed." 
The love, as well as the "fear of the Lord, is to de- 
part from evil. 

As a second division, and in this way correspond- 
ing with the animal kingdom, it is natural that it 
should approach this in its spiritual idea. But the 
endogen is still vegetable, not animal, life not soul, 
and its very fruits and stored up nutriment are in- 
dicative of this. They are the result of growth, and 
internal : they are as fruits of love enriching the 
heart, but which of course necessarily imply the 
ministry of love which will be the issue. 

3. THE THALLOGEN. 

Although the lowest form in the vegetable world, 
the thallogens nevertheless find, through the Duck- 
weed and the Grasswrack of the last division, their 
connection with it. These two orders, says Car- 
penter, — 

"Both consisting of aquatic plants, may be considered 
as presenting a near approach to the aquatic Cryptogamia 
in general structure; and some species are very like Alga? 
in external aspect. They are clearly separated from them, 



Life in its Loivcst Circle. 191 

however, by their organs of fructification; but these 
seem reduced to almost their simplest possible form." 

Thallogens are flowerless plants, composed of 
cellular tissue without vessels, and in which root, 
stem, and leaves are fused in one general mass, 
which is the thallus. While on the one hand we 
must consider them the lowliest form of life, there 
are on the other hand none in which the power of 
life is more manifest and more pervasive. In the 
stately tree a large part is considered to be dead, as 
no longer active, however much it may have its use 
and its necessity in relation to the welfare of the 
whole. But in the algae, the lichen, and the fungi, 
— the three orders into which the thallogens are 
divided, — there is no part dead. An intensity of life 
characterizes them, and almost every function of 
life — in the lowest forms absolutely so — is per- 
formed by every part. They are all root, all leaf, 
and often with various modes of propagation, they 
diffuse everywhere their microscopic spores, to find 
wherever they may a place favorable to develop- 
ment. They fill the water and the air ; they germ- 
inate on barren rock, amid snow and ice, on the 
bark of trees, on decaying or living organisms, and 
their tremendous power in the production of epi- 
demic and other diseases has only of late begun to 
be appreciated. Like the eyes of the Lord, which 
are in every place beholding the evil and the good, 



192 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

they are His ministers and messengers for wrath or 
mercy. 

Some, as the lichens, with slow growth, seem 
types of endurance and longsuffering, resisting cold 
and heat, and the fury of the storm, and able — 

4 s When scorched by the summer sunshine, deprived of 
all their juices, and reduced to shapeless, hueless masses, 
which crumble into powder under the slightest touch of 
the hand or the foot — to revive again when exposed to the 
genial influences of the rain, assume their fairest forms 
and develop their organs of fructification for the disper- 
sion of their kind." 

On the other hand, some, like the final outbreak 
of long-slumbering judgment, burst out in a night, 
spotting the face of nature with an eruptive growth, 
from which some malignant formations are called 
" fungous." Yet these also, as judgment passes in 
the divine compassion from the penitent, pass 
quickly away as they arise. They are the signs of 
existing corruption, as an ordinance of God for its 
removal, and the work being done, they pass away. 

Looking at these plants as in the third rank of 
vegetable existence there seems in them as a whole 
the assurance of the life they represent as having in 
it the pledge and power of resurrection. The lichen 
is above all that in which the generative power 
which characterizes the plant is found. It is the 
first growth which, diminutive as it may be, " plows 
upon the rock," where no plow of man will venture, 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 193 

and prepares the way for future harvests. The 
Fungi more plainly still speak of resurrection, 
springing as they do out of decay and death ; 
though we must unite to this the permanence of the 
lichen, to find the tyye filled out. Each type, in 
Scripture as in Nature, emphasizes its special point. 

Our life as children of God is indeed a resurrec- 
tion, and if this be the point emphasized here, we 
need not wonder if there be mystery accompanying 
it, though this, rather than discouraging, should 
awaken interest. Here we touch some of the deep- 
est problems of divine work in the soul ; and the 
humble forms before us, while in their lowliness 
they remind us of what our own origin is, indicate 
power and forces which are in themselves inscruta- 
ble. We see them in their operations only, and 
indeed as " through a glass, darkly." 

It may be thought that, as to the fungus, the type 
of resurrection is incongruous with that character 
of it, as representing judgment, which had been 
before referred to, and which seems in many cases 
to be less a figure than a fact. Smut, ergot, bunt, 
mould, in all their varied forms, are surely this ; and 
it would be useless to dispute it. The reconciling 
truth, however, may be found in different ways. 
First in this, that even the new life given to us 
when born again is in itself a judgment upon the 
old ; and it begins in us with the apprehension of 



194 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

such judgment. And note here that in fact in the 
fungi, (and strangely enough in forms as low as 
these,) some tokens of a higher life appear. 

4 In many of their properties," says one of the most 
appreciative observers of nature, "the fungi are closely 
allied to some members of the animal kingdom. They 
resemble the flesh in animals in containing a large propor- 
tion of albumenous proximate principles; and they are 
almost the only plants that contain azote or nitrogen, 
formerly regarded as one of the principal marks of dis- 
tinction between plants and animals. This element re- 
veals itself by the strong cadaverous smell, which most of 
them give out in decaying, and also by the savory meatlike 
taste which others of them afford. Unlike other vegeta- 
bles, they possess the remarkable property of exhaling 
hydrogen gas; and the great majority of species, like ani- 
mals, absorb oxygen from the atmosphere." 

He goes on to speak of the luminosity of some of 
them as another link, and adds, — 

"It may be remarked in connection with this luminous 
property, that many fungi are capable of generating con- 
siderable heat. Dutrochet ascertained that the highest 
temperature produced by any plant, with the exception of 
the curious cuckoo-pint of our woods, was generated by a 
species of toad-stool called Boletus ceneus. Such being 
the curious properties exhibited by these plants it is not 
surprising that at one period they should have been sus- 
pected to be animal productions, formed by insects for 
their habitations, somewhat like the coral structures of 
zoophytes and sponges. Though this view has long been 
felt to be utterly untenable, inasmuch as they have the 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 195 

growth and texture of plants, and it is well ascertained 
that they produce, and are produced from seeds like other 
plants, yet they are evidently one of the links in the chain 
of nature which unite the vegetable to the animal kingdom 
and show how arbitrary and unfounded were the old 
definitions which served to distinguish them from each 
other." 

This would surely strongly confirm the view that 
the fungi really stand as types of resurrection, an 
ascent as this is to a higher life. But this is not all 
that is to be said in answer to the question asked as 
to how they can be types of judgment also. The 
answer is that here as elsewhere we have many 
forms, and types of many things, evil as well as 
good ; and that there is a resurrection of judgment 
as well as a resurrection of life. All kinds of resur- 
rection possibly have here their representatives, as 
well as connected truths of many sorts. It is 
enough for us now to be able to find what seems 
the leading thought, already expressed by one 
whom we have often quoted, " fungi the resurrec- 
tion of plant-death." 

4. THE ANOGEN. 

We pass now to the mosses. That they fill a gap 
between the lichens and the ferns needs no insisting 
on : it is the place they fill for every botanist. They 
can be described, however, rather negatively than 
positively. They are composed of cellular tissue 



196 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

without either vessels or woody fibre, although roots 
and stem and leaves appear again in them ; humble 
plants, of small size, often minute. Their spores are 
carried in seed-vessels whose mouths are fringed 
with a single or double row of teeth, the " teeth be- 
ing ranged in each row in the geometrical progres- 
sion of 4, 8, 16, 32, or 64, there never being by any 
chance an odd number." Thus, in a singular man- 
ner, the number of its place in the vegetable circle 
is impressed on the Anogen. 

The meanings of this number are so few, however, 
and the characters of the moss apparently so nega- 
tive, that it would seem difficult to trace any cor- 
respondence. The number 4 is that which speaks 
of weakness and passiveness, as we have seen in the 
Radiates and in the mineral kingdom. " Capacity 
for division "—4 being the first number susceptible 
of this — suits also these. It is the earth-number 
also, and in this respect again agrees with them. 
What will it yield as to the moss ? 

Here is one character in which they are assimila- 
ted to the Radiates : — 

"Mosses possess in a high degree the power of repro- 
ducing such parts of their tissue as have been injured or 
removed. They may be trodden underfoot; they may be 
torn up by the plow or the harrow ; they may be cropped 
down to the earth, when mixed with grass, by graminivo- 
rous animals; they may be injured in a hundred other 
ways; but in a marvelously short space of time they 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 197 

spring up as verdant in their appearance, and as perfect 
in their form, as though they had never been disturbed. 
The necessity of such a power of regeneration as this is 
abundantly manifest, when we consider the numberless 
casualties to which they are exposed in the bare, shelter- 
less positions which they occupy." 

Again,— 

" Mosses were fancifully termed by Lumoeus servi — 
servants, or workmen ; for they seem to labor to produce 
vegetation in newly formed countries, where soil can 
scarcely yet be said to be. This is not their only use, 
however. They fill up and consolidate bogs, and form 
rich vegetable mold for the growth of larger plants, 
which they also protect from cold during the winter. 
They likewise clothe the sides of lofty hills and mountain- 
ranges, and powerfully attract and condense the watery 
vapors floating in the atmosphere, and thus become the 
living fountains of many streams." 

Lichens are similarly credited with the power to 
produce soil on barren spots : it is, however, by a 
different method : — 

"The mode in which they prepare the sterile rock for 
the reception of plants that require a higher kind of nour- 
ishment is most remarkable. They may be said to dig for 
themselves graves for the reception of their remains, 
when death and decay would otherwise speedily dissipate 
them. For whilst living, these lichens form a considerable 
quantity of oxalic acid (which is a peculiar compound of 
carbon and oxygen, two ingredients supplied by the at- 
mosphere) ; and this acts chemically upon the rock, (espe- 
cially if of limestone,) forming a hollow which retains the 



198 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

particles of the structure, when their term of connected 
existence has expired. The moisture which is caught in 
these hollows finds its way into the cracks and crevices of 
the rocks, and, when frozen, rends them into minute frag- 
ments by its expansion, and thus adds more and more to 
the forming soil." 

The moss does not produce soil by such action 
upon the rock, and on the other hand is a manufac- 
turer of it on a larger scale, gathering from the air 
the materials of its growth, and then giving them to 
the formation of soil while it grows on. Says 
Ruskin, — 

" That blackness at the root — though only so notable in 
this wood-moss and collateral species, is indeed a general 
character of the mosses, with rare exceptions. It is their 
funeral blackness ; — that, I perceive, is the way the moss- 
leaves die. They do not fall—they do not visibly decay ; 
but they decay mvisibly, in continual secession, beneath 
the ascending crest. They rise to form that crest, all 
green and bright, and take the light and air from those 
out of which they grew ; and those, their ancestors, darken 
and die slowly, and at last become a mass of moldering 
ground. In fact, as I perceive farther, their final duty is 
to die. The main work of other leaves is in their life, — 
but these have to form the earth out of which all other 
leaves are to grow." 

He adds, in a note written at an after-time, — 

" Bringing home here, evening after evening, heaps of 
all kinds of mosses from the hills among which the Arch- 
bishop Ruggieri was hunting the wolf and her whelps in 



Life in its Lowest Circle, 199 

Ugolino's dream, I am more and more struck, every day, 
with their special function as earth-gatherers, and with 
the enormous importance to their own brightness, and to 
our service, of that dark and degraded state of the inferior 
leaves. And it fastens itself in my mind mainly, as their 
distinctive character, that, as the leaves of a tree become 
wood, so the leaves of a moss become earth, while yet a 
normal part of the plant. Here is a cake in my hand 
weighing half a pound, bright green on the surface with 
minute crisp leaves ; but an inch thick beneath, in what 
looks at first like clay, but is indeed knitted fibre of 
exhausted moss." 

Here, then, comes the meaning for it, quite in 
accordance with its place in the vegetable series : 
exhaustion and decay doing God's work in renewal, 
as spiritually is indeed the case. " Man's day" has 
to close in ruin, and give place to that " day of the 
Lord" which is " upon every one that is proud and 
lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he 
shall be brought low," that the Lord alone may be 
exalted in that day. 

Even failure and evil, under God's hand, thus 
work often with us that humiliation in which is the 
secret of future blessing. Out of defeat comes vic- 
tory ; out of the experience of weakness, strength : 
the discipline of the wilderness is the training for 
the battles by which in the end the land of the in- 
heritance is to be possessed. Nothing could be a 
more needful lesson than that which here is taught 



200 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 

us by the lowly moss — dying to take possession of 
the earth. 



But there is another property of the moss, upon 
which largely depends its ability to fill the place for 
which it is destined. It is its already mentioned 
affinity for water. "Every part of them, and espe- 
cially the leaves, is endowed to a remarkable degree 
with the power of imbibing the faintest moisture 
from the air," and thus clothing the sides of lofty 
hils and mountain-ranges, they " powerfully attract 
and condense the watery vapors floating in the at- 
mosphere, and become the living fountains of many 
streams." 

How wonderful a property is this of a lowly 
plant ! and spiritually, the thought is quite easy to 
be read. It is the humble to whom God looks ; the 
proud He knoweth but afar off. It is our empti- 
ness, when apprehended in the soul, which makes 
us fit vessels for the Spirit of God to dwell in. — fit 
channels by which His fullness can be poured out 
for the refreshment of others. This is a simple 
thought, and as sweet as simple, while assuredly we 
need to be reminded of it. The insignificant moss 
may help to impress upon us what is of inestimable 
value for our souls. 

We shall have yet to see this in its place when we 
review presently this circle of nature-teachings. 



Life in its Lowest Circle, 201 

One group only now remains to be considered, — 
that of the ferns, or — 

5. ACROGENS. 




STEM OF TREE-FERN. ACROGENOUS. 

With the ferns are grouped also the club-mosses 
and the horse-tails, the former of which "are 
usually found iu bleak, bare, exposed situations in all 
parts of the world, and sometimes attain a large size, 
forsaking the creeping habit peculiar to the family, and 
becoming arborescent in tropical countries, particularly 
New Zealand, rivaling in rank luxuriance the surrounding 
trees and shrubs of the forest. . . . Lycopocls may be 
said to present the hignest type of cryptogamic vegetation, 
the highest limit capable of being reached by flowerless 
plants. Indeed, they are said, by botanists of the highest 
reputation, to bear a close affinity to coniferous trees, — 
to be, in fact, pine-trees in miniature." 



202 Spiritual Law in the Natural World. 



The Acrogens, therefore, lead us back toward the 
Exogens, and the circle here too is complete. 

Is it complete from the other side — the spiritual 
one ? This has been the case so often, that, even 
before knowing, one cannot but have a peaceful, 
happy confidence that so it must be here ; but I did 
not know, until I just now came to ask myself the . 
question, that so indeed it is. We have traveled 
round in the vegetable circle, just as we did 

in the animal, until we 
have got to the fifth place, 
just opposite the mollusk : 
what link can there be be- 
tween a fern and a mollusk? 
True, there was some kind 
of analogy attempted to 
be traced between them 
awhile ago, but it seemed 
after all a faint one, espe- 
cially the comparison of the 
mollusk's shell with the 
cylinder of the tree-fern. 
Now, as v/e look at this 
last vegetable form, what 
impresses one is, how 
thoroughly the leaf ap- 
pears to be the whole thing. 
the leaf. The scars of the fallen 




FROND OF A FERN. 

Showing the seed (or spore) in^ 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 203 

leaves mark the stem outside in the whole length 
of it ; the living leaves are thrown out at the top, 
but they, with the ducts and vessels which rise up 
into them, and the base of the old leaf-stalks, form 
the solid part of the trunk ; the centre, which is of 
cellular tissue, often is deficient, so that the cylinder 
is hollow; then the spores, which answer to the 
seeds in higher plants, are on the under side of the 
leaves : so that the whole growth of the plant seems 
to be, as it were, leaf. Just as the mollusk seems 
to exist but for its shell, so does the fern throw all 
its vigor and energy into that which is its crown 
of glory upon its summit, its crest of leaves. 

But what is the leaf ? Here what it is elsewhere, 
of course ; if we are to interpret it spiritually, as 
our rule is. And thus, if the leaf be the glory of 
the fern, it glorifies, as the mollusk does, its confes- 
sion : and this, for us, if we are His, is Christ. So 
that the mollusk and the fern are really akin, more 
nearly than at first we could have believed. There 
is a spiritual relationship which goes beyond, while 
it enforces the natural. And the fern fills thus the 
fifth place, as the mollusk does. It is the rounding 
off of the life with God, that God is confessed with 
the tongue, as glorified in the ways. And thus the 
circle is closed, and we are brought back to the be- 
ginning again. In the Exogen, it is Christ held in 
the heart; in the Acrogen, Christ confessed with 



204 Spiritual Laiv in the Natural World. 

the lips ; and if He be confessed because dear, yet 
He will be more dear for the confession. Yea, " if 
ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are 
ye ; for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon 
you." 

Notice here, that in the fern, there is no flower, 
no fruit : the seed is in the leaf itself. And how 
fruitful is this confession of Christ, when it comes 
in its place in the filled out circle, — when it is itself 
fruit, as we may say, the fern-leaf is. What better 
fruit is there than this, when the testimony to Christ 
comes out of a heart filled with, and a life given to, 
Him! 

Here, then, we close our glance — mere glance 
it is — at the Vegetable Kingdom. We began with — 

i. Christ dwelling in the heart by faith, known 
by the Word of truth, growingly more and more 
known, the stay and support of the soul, which de- 
velops into power and individuality as it is built 
up on Him. Nothing is more individual than the 
exogenous tree, strictly as it adheres to the divine 
plan for it. 

2. Then we had the fruitful life, separate from 
the world, armed against evil, elastic under pressure, 
— the result of the former. This is the walled and 
fruitful Endogen. 

3. Then we go deeper, to see this life as a life in 
resurrection, a life which thus has power over death, 



Life in its Lowest Circle. 205 

though it implies the judgment of the old man, and 
the old things passed away. This is the Thallogen. 

4. Then in the lowly moss, we learn the weakness 
which is strength, a humiliation which implies ex- 
altation, a discipline which is a Father's hand, and 
how our need and nothingness attract the dew and 
ministry of the Spirit. 

5. And lastly, what this leads us to is joy in 
Christ, and the confession of His name. Who else 
is worthy ? what remains to us as the necessary con- 
sequence, but that " Christ is all " ? 

And now I have but to close this fragmentary 
sketch with the expression of the hope, that, poor 
as it is, it will yet help some to a new reading of the 
facts of nature, — be even in some measure a key to 
the language of what the finger of God has written 
for our learning ; that He Himself may be better 
known and nearer, nature witnessing of Him as 
Scripture does, and one with Scripture in its wit- 
ness, — Christ the theme of both. 

"And every creature which is in heaven, and on 
the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in 
the sea, even all that are in them, heard I saying, 
* Blessing, and glory, and honor, and power be unto 
Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the 
Lamb forever and ever.' " 

THE BIBLE TRUTH PRESS, NEW YORK. 



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St. Louis, June, 1891. 
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